Unfortunately, if you're going to take to the roads here, at some point you're going to have to do it. And I hope it will be less fraught for you than it was for me. The first time I indicated to turn right, it was followed swiftly by a terrified yelp of "left!" from my wife, a crescendo of car horns and a swift rummage through my vocabulary for my choicest expletives.
I was aware, vaguely, that Melbourne is the world capital of the obscure traffic manoeuvre known as the hook turn. I had gawped at it, slack-jawed, as a tourist. I had subsequently mentioned it at dinner parties in London, holding my audience rapt (so I thought) in the manner of an explorer recounting the details of a year spent amongst cannibals. And damn it, I'd even married a Melbourne girl. But despite all this it was about five years after my first visit to the city before I ventured into its centre in a hire car, and somehow so counter-intuitive a move had slipped my mind.
Counter-intuitive, that is, except in a city that uses the tram as one of its major forms of public transport. Melbourne was blessed, shortly after its inception, with a plan which involved a grid of exceptionally broad streets. This later enabled tram tracks to be run down the centre of many of them, whilst still leaving plenty of room for other vehicles. The only problem with this arises when drivers want to turn across the oncoming traffic (which, as Australia drives on the left, means a right turn). Under normal traffic rules - even the ones that apply in the rest of Melbourne - this means moving to the right, stopping, and waiting to complete the turn. However, this would mean stopping on the tram tracks, thus blocking them, which would cause bigger problems in the busy centre than elsewhere.
Which brings us to the hook turn, which involves nothing more than turning right from the left hand lane. If you want to see an animated example of how this works in an ideal world, click here. In my case it tends to include violent jerking of my head as I attempt both to check the traffic lights (in front of me) and the traffic coming from behind, followed by a Starsky and Hutch-style squeal of tyres as I turn 90 degrees at speed in the nanosecond between the lights turning red and a taxi hitting me in the side.
The hook turn broadly divides Melburnians into two groups. On the one hand there are those who see that it is a sensible and necessary compromise to enable public transport to run smoothly in their city. On the other there are those who simply avoid driving in its centre at all costs.
The city elders could probably help the hook turn virgin a little more. Australians have a mania for public signage, much of it confusing owing to its sheer profusion and small size (you can fit more signs in that way, see?). The signs indicating Melbourne's most confusing traffic rule certainly suffer from these issues. Apart from that, it's difficult to see any other way of doing things, apart from getting rid of either trams or cars, neither of which is about to happen.
On the other hand, if you happen to be in Melbourne seeing the sights, you should certainly take a minute or two out to see some drivers attempting one. After all, people shouting at each other are so much more entertaining when you're not involved.
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