At the beginning of 2012 I started a job as a part time journalist for a newspaper called Southern Farmer. The job was based in Surrey Hills in Melbourne and I was required to use the company car to venture onto farms and gather readable stories on what farmers were doing.
One of my early trips took me to Ballarat in the company's Mazda SUV, or in my parlance a four wheel drive.It was not a success on two counts because I broke the back window and then picked up a computer generated speeding ticket.
I did a really good job on the rear window by backing it into the edge of a semi trailer as I sought to drive away from a farm where I'd asked directions to my appointed interviewee.
That was bad enough but to get to the dairy where the subject worked, I had to drive along a gravel road. That wouldn't have been too bad in winter, but it was high summer and the rear windowless SUV sucked in huge quantities of dust. It coated every surface imaginable and even opening every window on the way back to Melbourne hardly made a dent in its tenacity.
In any event I took the car home and spent about an hour and half dusting and vacuuming to remove as much as I could.
At the same time I had to tell the owner his steed would be damaged and late for a night time engagement he had planned for it. However I more or less met his deadline.
Some weeks later my boss handed me a speeding infringement notice from the police, which indicated I'd been doing 112km/h in a 100km/h zone on the Western Ring Road.
While this seemed like bad news, I determined I would not pay it unless I was forced to, as I had recently bought a book on how to avoid paying speeding fines.
I'll spare you the details of the resistance but in early 2014 I found myself in the Sunshine Magistrates court defending my actions. In fact I had to sit through a morning of more serious efforts by several people who wanted to regain their driving licences after committing a range of offences.
Eventually when the magistrate asked me to explain the circumstances of the offence, I told him it was quite inadvertent and I thought the speed cameras might not have been checked for accuracy for some time.
He more or less dismissed that but said that as I'd come all the way from Benalla to defend the charge and the speed was only a few kilometres over - it had already been rounded down or something to 109km/h - he would dismiss the charge.
Just shows you shouldn't always just pay those speeding fines.
David Palmer
August 2015
One of my early trips took me to Ballarat in the company's Mazda SUV, or in my parlance a four wheel drive.It was not a success on two counts because I broke the back window and then picked up a computer generated speeding ticket.
I did a really good job on the rear window by backing it into the edge of a semi trailer as I sought to drive away from a farm where I'd asked directions to my appointed interviewee.
That was bad enough but to get to the dairy where the subject worked, I had to drive along a gravel road. That wouldn't have been too bad in winter, but it was high summer and the rear windowless SUV sucked in huge quantities of dust. It coated every surface imaginable and even opening every window on the way back to Melbourne hardly made a dent in its tenacity.
In any event I took the car home and spent about an hour and half dusting and vacuuming to remove as much as I could.
At the same time I had to tell the owner his steed would be damaged and late for a night time engagement he had planned for it. However I more or less met his deadline.
Some weeks later my boss handed me a speeding infringement notice from the police, which indicated I'd been doing 112km/h in a 100km/h zone on the Western Ring Road.
While this seemed like bad news, I determined I would not pay it unless I was forced to, as I had recently bought a book on how to avoid paying speeding fines.
I'll spare you the details of the resistance but in early 2014 I found myself in the Sunshine Magistrates court defending my actions. In fact I had to sit through a morning of more serious efforts by several people who wanted to regain their driving licences after committing a range of offences.
Eventually when the magistrate asked me to explain the circumstances of the offence, I told him it was quite inadvertent and I thought the speed cameras might not have been checked for accuracy for some time.
He more or less dismissed that but said that as I'd come all the way from Benalla to defend the charge and the speed was only a few kilometres over - it had already been rounded down or something to 109km/h - he would dismiss the charge.
Just shows you shouldn't always just pay those speeding fines.
David Palmer
August 2015
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