I decided to drive in to town this morning to “adventure alley” (aka Kent Street in the city), to try and find some low-cut waterproof hiking shoes that I can wear away rather than my sneakers.
I also had some luggage that I needed to drop off at a repair place to see if they could fix them up.
I drove in late-morning and spent a few hours wandering through the shops, trying on shoes. Finally found some that fit quite well (I have wide feet, so have a lot of trouble finding shoes that fit correctly), but the colour was just not good, and nobody seems to be stocking the other colours I know this shoe comes in.
I did manage to pick up some socks and some combination locks for our luggage, so the trip wasn’t a complete waste of time.
I was just in the car heading home when Leanne called and told me I needed to drive out to Parramatta.
We’ve been waiting for our police criminal record check certificates to come back for nearly 2 weeks now, they told us they had been sent on Tuesday. I would have expected them in the mail on Wednesday, but knowing the local mail delivery here in Artarmon, it wouldn’t surprise me if they arrived on Thursday. However, on Friday, Leanne’s certificate arrived without mine – which was not looking good for having our documentation sent to Colombia in a reasonable amount of time.
Leanne called the criminal records section of the NSW police and managed to convince them to print me a new copy of my certificate and let me come and collect it from police HQ in Parramatta.
So, I headed out from the city along Parramatta road towards the M4 motorway and Parramatta. It took me nearly an hour just to reach the M4, and traffic on the M4 was almost at a stand-still as well. The very wet weather wasn’t helping things either. All up it took nearly 2 hours to drive from the city to Parramatta – and I was starting to worry that the person I needed to speak to would have left for the day by the time I got there.
They ended up keeping me waiting for nearly 45 minutes before they came downstairs with my new certificate, but eventually I got it. Unfortunately, by the time I managed to drive back to Artarmon (Pennant Hills Road was also a parking lot), it was after 5pm and the Post Office was closed – so we couldn’t send our documents today anyway.
I was only home for about half an hour or so before I needed to get dressed and drive back up the M2 parking lot to Baulkham Hills for a dinner I had organised for a group of people – so it ended up being a very long and tiring day of driving in heavy traffic. At least the drive home at around 11pm was nice and smooth!
Update: 16th March – my police certificate magically appeared in our letterbox nearly 2 weeks after I collected the new copy. I’m glad we pushed them for a new copy – otherwise our documentation would have been very delayed! Don’t you just love Australia Post some times?
Leave a Reply