#notwithoutdifficulties

Never have I ever bought/owned/dealt with any cars – well, except for driving one. That sentence was for the both of us. But not anymore!

Since arriving to Australia we were thinking how we would like to experience all means of transportation. Flying is fast, but then you can't see any country. Trains are fast as well and you see the country but rarely stop between A & B. Busses are great to see the country and stop on the (longer) ways, but you are restricted to timetables. One option we hadn’t explored yet was driving, ourselves, long distances. Isn't Australia the promised land of road-trippers? But how would we do that without a car?

Luckily an acquaintance of Papá came by one day and told how he had a car that needed to be driven down close to Sydney. Awesome! We would be leaving December 27th and he would get the car by 29th. Done deal! Then came the rain for five days and we never heard from him. And when we finally got hold of him – he just informed us that he is already driving down “but no worries, you still have a week to figure it out”. How in the middle of nowhere, no internet and during public holidays do you expect us to “figure it out”?

Then few days before our due-departure date from Eidsvold, Sonja and Pia were on horseback droving cattle. All of a sudden a white car starts honking at us and driving like a maniac. Sonja was about get off the horse and punch the driver, when Pia noticed that it was Papá! He had talked with the guys at the Eidsvold dump and they had some cars on sale. So Papá had been listening to us, asking our price range and went to look for the best option for us.

We test-drove the car. Automatic, A/C working, registered until May, fairly new engine, new tires… The car felt like luxury after our broken “start with a screwdriver” ute. We don’t know much about buying cars, but the one we had at hand seemed a great and reliable one and hey – you have to start from somewhere. We discussed the price and decided to place both 1,5month of earned money at the outback into our car.

Then all that needed to be done, was to change over the name in the registration. And Pia got a first hand experience of the Australian governments paperwork, small print, nibble-dip. “It will just be a quick visit to the local council office”, they said. Quick… Well, since Pia apparently is not a citizen of Australia (duh!) changing the registration comes a bit more complicated. You have to apply to be a new customer for this council, basically get a social id for Queensland. For that you need three different forms of identification, such as foreign passport, student card (of course Pia had left hers at home – in Finland), medicare card, also an Australian bank card will count as one. But in addition you need to have a permanent address in Queensland. And to prove that you need a signed authentication from someone you’re living with stating that you’re actually living with them. Wait, what? All that just to change a name on a car? Thank you, Australia, for making this easy on us.

But all is well that ends well. After the bureaucracy war our lovely Kia is now registered and when someone says, “never have I ever owned a car” in a game, we’ll take a drink.