Pimping out your wagon

This was Willie's first trip to the Blue Mountains

A station wagon easily converts into a sleeping capsule simply by putting down the back seats and rolling out a thin mattress or airbed. There’s heaps of space, my boyfriend is over 6ft and he was fine. You probably want to acquire sleeping bags and a blanket too if you are here in winter, as the temperature does get quite low at night. Other essential camping goods are a pump(if you have an air bed) a gas stove, foldable chairs, a coolbox, large water container, lamp, torch, plates, large pan, cups, chopping board, cutlery and utensils-don’t forget the tin opener and corkscrew! You can pick up a lot of this stuff from charity shops such as Vinnies and the Salvos for dirt cheap, however if you don’t want second hand goods the cheapest place to go is KMART. This place is fantastic for all your camping equipment and the quality has not been bad at all, all of our stuff is still going strong, apart from one of our foldable chairs, but hey it was $4 so I’m not complaining.
All the campervans have curtains over the windows which is pretty essential unless you want woken at the crack of dawn!  So I decided to add a bit of glamour to our Willie Wagon by putting up some red velvet curtains. I was lucky as I worked in a place with sewing machines and fabric readily available, so all I had to do was screw some eye hooks into the plastic interior then hang the curtains on some elastic, allowing them to be gathered when not in use. Since most people travelling are not gonna have access to sewing machines, a good idea would be to stick up those reflecting sun shields , which you can pick up really cheap in stores like Smart Dollar. Though, if you buy from a backpacker the vehicle will probably come with curtains, it may even come with all the camping stuff.
Lastly because we’re all rock n roll n that, we treated Willie Wagon to a dangling shrunken head and a dancing hula girl on the dashboard :)

Buying a car

Travelling around Oz is obviously far more rewarding if you have your own transport. I t enables you to be so much more flexible with your destinations and see far more interesting places than you would if you were confined to busing it on the Greyhound ( believe me, I did that in 2007).  There are so many options when it comes to choosing a vehicle. There are campervans galore from companies such as Wicked, Jucy, Spaceships, Hippie Camper , and for those with money you can get the 4wd monster off road range rovers and then lastly the humble station wagon. We chose to buy a station wagon purely because we intended to spend a lot of time in the city and felt it would be easier for day to day runs to work and parking. They are also the cheapest option and parts are readily available especially if you go for a Holden or a Toyota.
Firstly we looked at Travellers Auto Barn as they do have a warranty(though limited), however we had a limited budget and most of their wagons were around the $3000 dollar mark. Gasp! Surely not! -for a car 15 years old, this seems ridiculous coming from the UK where old cars cost only a few hundred pounds. Yes cars here are unfortunately that expensive, but do not let that put you off , it is worth it in the long run. We then headed to the car market at Kings Cross, a car park where backpackers set up to flog their cars before heading home. I have very little car knowledge and had only recently passed my test so I was just not keen to buy from someone whom also had little car knowledge and could possibly sell you a big piece of crap if it meant money for their flight home. If you know your stuff though, this may be the ideal place to grab a bargain. The other option is good old Gumtree. We happened across a wagon being sold for a bargain price by a Sydney native who was moving over seas. After meeting at his house, having a good test drive and looking at its pink slip certificate (bit like M.O.T cert.) we decided to hand over the $1800. This was an especially good price as it still had 10 months registration on it which can easily be transferred over into your name.

The selling basically involves you and the sellers signing a document of sale which you then take to the RTA to get the car registered in your name. If buying a car with no rego (note this is the Aussie term for registration in case you hadn’t guessed!) you will need to get a pink slip done at a garage for around $35,(this is a safely check) and also buy a green slip(compulsory 3rd party insurance) before you go to the RTA to pay for the rego. Getting some further car insurance is also a good idea.

 I really hope this helps some people out, because we found it a really daunting experience since we had never been car owners in the UK.