Our trip to Oz is almost over. Yesterday, we said goodbye to the Falcon:
We bought the Ford Falcon station wagon a few days after we arrived. On the inside, the lining under the roof had been removed, so it did not look pretty. But it drove well, and had only 220 thousand kilometers - about 100-200K less than similar 15-year old cars.
It has had a few little problems. The day after we bought it, we discovered that one of the doors in the back could not be locked. Back to the mechanic who sold the car. He "fixed" it - it was now permanently closed, and could not be opened anymore. Much better! The back seats were folded down to accommodate our windsurfing gear, anyway.
A day later, we discovered that the door on the back also did not close. Not feeling too smart now, but finally understanding why there were so many disconnected cables in the back, we almost drove back to the mechanic again. But before we had a chance, our windsurfing friend Mike fixed it for us.
The only other issue was a flat tire a few weeks later. A couple of tires were now close to the legal limit, and he were planning to drive through the Nullabor, where there are many hundred kilometers between towns. So we replaced all tires for AUD $360, hoping that the new tires would make it easier to sell the car.
The biggest bummer about buying a car was that we left Lake George a few days earlier than absolutely necessary, so that we'd have a few days in Melbourne to sell the car. Of course, conditions were perfect a couple of days later, and some guys got their magic 40 knots for the first time. At least one of them improved their previous best by about 4 knots. Who knows what we could have done? Maybe next time..
We ended up selling the car to a guy from Canada who is here for a year. It helped that the car was registered in Western Australia: transferring the registration can be done by mail; no safety inspection is required; and the registration (which includes insurance) can be extended easily over the internet, which he did right away. We got exactly the same amount we had paid for the car, so it cost us less than $600 for the registration and the new tires - a lot cheaper than any rental would have been! Perhaps we got lucky because nothing major broke, but the car was made to be used as a taxi, and it's supposedly good for a million kilometers. Seeing that there are lots of these Falcons around with more than 400K kilometers, that probably true.
How was Lake George, you wonder? We'll fantastic .. but that's a different post.