Car Shopping

I finally bought a car! It's a 2004 Holden Astra City edition. It's white, it has four doors and it has air conditioning. It does NOT have power windows, but I imagine I'll mostly use the air con anyway, so no biggie. It's also an automatic, which is not something I thought I'd drive again after discovering that I love driving stick. Last time I was in Australia I drove stick around Perth and I was fine, but this time around I was a little anxious about it and thought an automatic might be easier to handle driving on the left, so an automatic it is.

I bought it off of Karratha Buy, Sell and Swap on Facebook, not Dreamer's Hill, which is where I thought I'd find it. Buy, Sell and Swap is where Karrathans post items to (you guessed it) buy, sell or swap. You can find anything on it: dining room sets, gym memberships, video games, vehicles... I had been scanning the site for a couple weeks and noticed that most things went pretty quickly. You had to act fast to get in on the deal. When Ashleigh's ad came up for the Astra I was the first one to reply. I viewed it that afternoon and had my friend Beck's husband check it out the next day. I had bought my three previous cars privately before, but never without having a mechanic checking it out. Apparently that's quite pricy to do here and while I was a little nervous about skipping this important step, it seemed like a good buy, so after doing a Revs Check (a vehicle history check) I went ahead and bought it. The last Revs Check I had done showed the vehicle in question, a Mazda 3, had flood damage and had been written off, so that was $35 well spent. This one turned up nothing, which eased my mind a bit. I'd be happier if my brother the mechanic was here to check it out, but I think I did pretty well all things considering. Dreamer's Hill is a large lot on the corner of the Dampier Highway where people park their cars, utes and boats hoping for a sale. It's where I found the Mazda 3. It's a quite a busy place on the weekend and gets lots of traffic. When it comes time for me to sell the Astra in December, I'll probably use both Dreamer's Hill and Karratha Buy, Sell and Swap. I'll need to make a quick sale too!

A surprising thing about buying a car in Australia: you have to pay a stamp duty when you transfer ownership. It cost $220! What?! This car buying business was more expensive than I had thought. The car itself was $7400, the two Revs Checks were $70, the registration fee was $436 and then comprehensive insurance was ~ $900. Crazy! Just over $9000 initial investment and then gas (I mean, petrol), which costs $1.68/L. At least it's not New Zealand, where prices were as high as $2.16/L! Hopefully I'll be able to recoup most of the cost of the car when I sell in December.

I'm a little sad I don't have an SUV (I really had my heart set on a Toyota Rav4, a Honda CR-V or a Jeep TJ), but with gas prices being what they are, I don't want to shell out more than I have to. So I'm not driving what I pictured myself in, but I am driving an Aussie car, which I love! Hopefully it'll grow on me. My first big road trip will probably be to Coral Bay over Easter, which is at the end of the month. It's a six hour drive, which is a long day driving by myself. I've driven to Canmore by myself before though, so I can do it. I'm not sure how to do it without music~ I have no CDs here and I'm sure the radio won't work the entire time. I guess I'll be listening to my iPod through my ear buds- yuck!

This weekend is the Labour Day long weekend. It kind of snuck up on me, so I'm not going away anywhere special. I've been invited out on both Saturday and Sunday nights, so that's exciting. Hopefully I'll finalize Easter plans and make some headway with my April holidays as well.