Deep in the land of the backpacker, three Irishwomen learned the intricaciesof the 'rego'. Elaine Larkin tells the tale
There's something suffocating about sitting in a car with no air conditioning and only one window that opens in 30-degree-plus temperatures. But this is Cairns, this is Australia, this is the land of the backpacker and this is as good as a car gets for a backpacker on a budget.
Buying a car is never a problem for a backpacker in Australia, but fixing it up to make it roadworthy for registration is another story. Acquiring a roadworthy certificate can set back your travels by a few weeks - as three young Irishwomen, Annette Flynn (24) and Niamh Lally (24), both from Co Mayo, and Elaine Wellwood (23) from Co Laois, have discovered.
The three women, who all have the one-year Australian working holiday visa, arrived in Cairns in mid-September with the hope of buying a car to take them around Australia for the next 12 months. After a week of searching through ads on hostel noticeboards, and trying to put to the back of their minds the story about the Israeli backpackers who stuck an engine together with superglue and sold it to unsuspecting fellow backpackers for Aus$3,000 (€1,660), they finally made a purchase.
They haggled with Tom and Vicky, a seemingly reliable British couple, and settled on a local make of car, a 1984 Holden Commodore Berlina for Aus$1,500 (€830). It had a six cylinder engine, all the right paperwork, a broken indicator light, missing air-conditioning fan belt and two dodgy electric windows. A very good car, apparently.
Jessy, a 19-year-old hostel bus driver and alleged mechanic, said he could fix a few things in exchange for a packet of cigarettes. He assured the Irish girls that the car could be fixed up easily enough to get that all-important safety certificate necessary for "rego" (registration). Despite his enthusiasm, and his self-proclaimed mechanical ability, the repairs were beyond him.
The list which the roadworthy inspector gave to the girls was long. Lots of things were wrong with Simi - the girls called the car after a Fijian friend. "Whoever did this was very hard on you," Dave the mechanic told them.
But with a bit of Irish charm, a few smiles and the fact he had three girls in a mixture of skirts, shorts, vests, V-neck tops, and bikinis in front of him, he said he'd do it all for Aus$812 (€450), billing them for only four of the seven hours' labour which the car needed.
If the car was perfect, Dave promised, he'd buy it from the girls for Aus$3,000, clearly unaware they had paid only Aus$1,500 the previous week. An offer of Aus$3,000 from a mechanic means the possibility of getting Aus$4,000 from a backpacker at the end of their travels, depending on whether the city they are in is a buyer's or a seller's market.
Despite this, the car ordeal has often been frustrating. The secret of buyer's bliss is to buy a car which has a recent safety certificate and a registration plate registered in the same state.
Simi had New South Wales plates, and needed the safety certificate to be registered in Queensland. The luck of the seller is off-loading a car that needs a bit of work done on it. "Oh, I'm sick of all this," said Annette at one stage. "I think I'll just take the bus."
The erratic windows have also been a headache. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Simi is, by now, well known in Cairns.
Mechanics aside, lots of helping hands have been used including backpackers, car wreckers and even Pete, the manager of Rosie's Backpackers, where Simi and his owners have been staying.
It was Nat from Portsmith Wreckers, who solved the window problem after he was gently persuaded to remove the console from his own Holden and try it in Simi. It worked. The problem was clearly the console - the buttons operating the windows.
So the hunt started for a Holden console, apparently a rare and expensive item in far northern Queensland, at about Aus$200 before labour costs. With luck finally on their side, a remedy was found for Aus$50 and, a few hours later, Simi finally made it in for his second roadworthy, with three of the four windows working.
The car was failed. What next? Along with theories on how to fix the car, the girls had been inundated with suggestions on how to avoid rego and roadworthy tests. One backpacker suggested making a copy of the rego sticker for the front of the car, but with changed dates.
Another suggestion was to leave the date the car has to be registered empty on the documentation. If stopped by police, they could say they had just bought it and were going to get it fixed up.
More work was done on the car windows, only for it to fail its third roadworthy because, in an accident, the electric windows needed to work from the back seats. They didn't. Two new buttons were required, so it was off to the wreckers' yards again. Finally, a Holden dealership, called Ireland's, came up trumps with the parts.
Then it was off to the roadworthy for the fourth time - but this time to a more sympathetic inspector. He passed it - "but not with flying colours," as Dave the mechanic commented. First stop was the Queensland Transport office to get 12 months registration.
After weeks of hassle, it was finally time to hit the road, up north to Cape Tribulation, with all windows operating and music blaring, of course.
But the car's problems were far from over. After a weekend of driving past bush fires, navigating steep, windy and pebble-dashed roads through a rainforest, it was a stop for petrol on the way back to Cairns that nearly lost Niamh, Annette and Elaine every cent they had pumped into Simi.
One of the three, who prefers to remain nameless, put 20 litres of diesel into the car, on top of 10 litres of unleaded petrol. Luckily she realised this before starting the car, so the diesel didn't get into the engine and ruin it.
Bob from the Royal Automobile Club of Queensland siphoned out the fuel. He was quite familiar with this mistake - another Irish backpacker did it the week before. With a full tank of fuel, the car made it back to Cairns with no problems. Just another 3,000 kilometres to Sydney.