I never had a good sense of direction. ( absolutely none). I always blamed this weakness that I had evidently developed during my  young adulthood years on my City upbringing.

As a young person if I ever found myself a little bit lost I inevitably reverted to checking out the numbers located at front and rear of passing buses.

Buses as a rule have a set route and standing at a bus stop in a city it seemed a quite a natural progressing to develop a growing awareness and understanding that certain bus numbers stick rigidly to a particular route.

 As a youth in the city and finding myself under a rising sun when my only known direction was an awareness that I was heading rapidly towards sobering up. I relied heavily on knowing that the “38 bus” went past my local library and headed up the hill toward, Past the Odeon Picture house, then did a U turn and did the reverse route.

This meant that if I found myself looking at a  38 bus and also a 72 bus, I had a cross reference. The result being that if my  wristwatch said 6.45 A.M. I had no problem navigating my way to work.

Emigrating to Australia I found some of Basic rules my father taught me. One of them being my  ability to locate the North Star to be totally obsolete. On several occasions I found myself blankly looking at the night sky wondering what the hell had happened to “The Stars”. I will admit it, Southern skies to this day totally confuse me. . .  I suspect that some things need to be learned young.

I write this note to excuse myself from an incident that happened when I was working in an outback pub.  On one rainy day I received a phone call from a local resident checking the road conditions. “Was it Raining?”  Asked the caller. “Yes,” I said. “what direction is it coming from”. “This totally stumped me. “It is coming from UP and its heading DOWN” I said.