Now that we’ve moved into our lovely swanky studio apartment, it’s time to turn our attention towards buying a car to take us more than ten thousand kilometres around Australia, to infinity and beyond. We’ve got to be careful what we buy. We want something ultra-reliable, well known by mechanics, spacious (enough to sleep in, when we can’t be bothered to pitch a tent or if the wildlife is too scary) and has the most brilliant air-conditioning. We’re setting ourselves a tight budget of less than AUD$4000 (under £2000) for the vehicle, to limit our downside loss should we have to force a quick sale in a few months time.

We’re both romantically taken with the notion of buying a 4×4, preferably a Toyota Land Cruiser (to remind us of our African safari) but after scouring the newspapers, websites, noticeboards of the hostels and, in particular, seeing an 470,000km example where the bodywork was just about clinging-on with bits of fishing wire, it became clear to us that we hadn’t the budget to purchase a decent vehicle nor the appetite to invite a serious–read: expensive–breakdown in the middle of the desert. And it didn’t have air-conditioning either! I’ve included a photo of the Land Cruiser we saw in the gallery below, just to show people what they look like — regardless of how funky it looks in the photo, believe me it had a rust problem that made Yoko, our old camper van, look like a concours winner.

We lowered our sights away from the world of 4×4’s and refocused towards a ‘family’ station wagon. Outside of the Land Cruiser world, two brands kept coming up that would meet our reliability/serviceability criteria: Ford and Holden (nee Vauxhall/GM). In this price range, it turned out that we would still be pushed to find something decent. There are no compulsory MOT’s over here and so private sales and auctions are fraught with danger. Plus every car we phoned-up about had sold that morning. The dealerships turned us away, telling us that balancing our criteria and budget was impossible — and no way would we get a warranty anywhere with our money…

And then we met Don. A seventy year-old lovable-rogue who kept rolling out the classics like “I’m not a mechanic, nor a fortune teller. I can’t say what’s what, it’s up to you to make up your own mind. I’m not forcing you to buy nothing.” And there was a station wagon on his yard. It was a Ford. 1993. It was big. And had ‘only’ done 270,000km on the clock. It was AUD$3000 and Don agreed to throw in a country-wide twelve month warranty, which should cover us against any really major works. Was this to be the car that would carry us through the outback and around Oz?

No, it was not. A test drive proved the car to be a most disconnected affair, the powerless engine and floppy accelerator pedal showed up this old codger for what he was. And the odometer didn’t move–gawd knows how many kilometres this car had done–rendering the warranty null and void. Returning the keys and our odometer concerns to Don, his boss Dennis appeared and suggested that we might like to give a more recent example a go: “I’m sure you’ll find it a totally different drive.”

And it was! Three years younger, 70,000 less kilometres on the tamper-proof electronic odometer, cleaner interior, tinted windows (very useful in the heat), a better warranty and a totally, totally different drive altogether. Not a perfect deal by any means: it cost another thousand dollars and the last owner had obviously hastily backed into his trailer too many times, spotting small dinks and dents on the rear door, but otherwise it was great. The engine (4.0L petrol) was clearly capable and the air-conditioning re-enacted a winter’s day in Sweden. I smiled at Claire, “this is the one.”

So meet Don (named after the salesman): our ’96 Ford Falcon barge, who will accompany us north, south, east and west throughout this massive land. We’re thrilled.

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