Aussie rules: park your van with care

Today's Emissions is a plea - of sorts - from one of our friends in far, far, faraway places.

Many of you lovely people may already be planning your summer holidays. Some of you may even be students looking forward to a "working" holiday in Australia. You may fancy a bit of adventure, of roughing it, only ringing home to Daddy for more funds once a month, like the rebels you are.

Some of you may even think piling into the back of a van with six marketing students from Rathmines and parking up in a suburban street in Sydney for three months constitutes living on the edge. Well, I have been asked by an Irish ex-pat residing in that very neck of the woods to ask you not to. This fine fellow has been driven to distraction, if you'll excuse the pun, by such behaviour. So much so he ended up in court.

Poor chap, let's call him Dr Bateman (he'd like that), was once a bit of a tearaway himself. But now age has turned him bitter and resentful. By his own admission, he invariably resembles a bulldog licking something gucky off a nettle.

Several months ago, unable to find a parking space within two miles of his Bondi home due to his neighbourhood being annexed by battered vans full of fledgling accountants from Mullingar, he was forced to park illegally.

Off to bed with him with the cunning plan of arising pre-6am to move his vehicle, thus avoiding having it fall into the clutches of the notoriously cash-hungry Sydney traffic wardens. Alarm went off, up he gets, arrives at car at 6.05am, finds ... a parking ticket. (Aussie wardens are, by all accounts, early risers, not to mention vindictive, jobsworths.)

Fuming, he picks it up, turns it over and ticks the 'I will contest' box. Stubborn as stubborn gets, the Doctor. Goes home, tells the wife.

(A lovely woman, I know her well.)

"She just looked at me and quietly reminded herself to go and light another candle to St Dympna, the patron saint of the unbalanced, which was quite a feat of faith, considering she isn't even Catholic," he writes.

Weeks pass. Advice comes to our friend from all sources not to bother, to just cough up and be done with it. Aussie authorities are fond of these wars of attrition, which they invariably win. Not this time, says the Doctor. Not letting a bunch of lobster-tanned students and their bedwetting traffic warden chums get one over on me.

His day comes. The court is horrific. Waits for hours, watching life unfold before him, an unrelenting procession of the guilty, insane, boring, downtrodden, "innocent", scary, more boring, and downright monotonous.

The Doctor, an educated and civic-minded chap, is frequently tempted to interject whilst listening to some poor deluded twit defend himself. Resists. Instead, spends the time browsing Ebay for designer shirts on his mobile phone, trying to look like one of the lads. Fails miserably. At one stage is surrounded by a 10-strong Tongan biker gang. All tattoos and mullets and attitude. Each and every one as big as a Toyota Yaris, muscles on their muscles, like condoms filled with walnuts.

Steadfast, the Doctor was unwavering. Called eventually. Stands up, bravely outlines his case, adding that he "took umbrage" at having to sneak around in the early hours in order to park his own car in front of his own house.

Magistrate dismissed the ticket, told the doctor he was free to leave. Quickly. The umbrage comment had caused some of the assorted crims to, well, take umbrage.

The point of this tale? Please have some consideration. You students don't want to put anyone else through such a travail just because you couldn't be bothered finding somewhere to park, do you?

(In case you don't care, a little tip: Dr Bateman and the Tongans are now firm pals, having discovered a shared loathing of pasty white students in vans.)