Monday, January 11, 2010

561-803

You might be wondering what these 6 digits are - can ya guess????

Its the license plate to my new car!!!!!

Yes, its true, I finally broke down and bought a car. Rob and I have been tossing around the idea of a car for quite some time now, and have even looked at a few, but nothing really seemed to grasp us. Plus cars up here in the NT seem to be pretty expensive. For a decent car your looking at about $3000, and I am always hesitant buying used cars, especially from strangers.

Well, earlier last week, I was in my bosses office having a chat, (a good one, it was her last day of work) and I mentioned that I was ready to leave Darwin, that Rob and I have been pretty bored and not having a car isn't helping the situation. That is when she said that she hasn't been able to GIVE her car away!! She was leaving the territory on Sunday and still hadn't sold it. The more we chatted, the more I became intrigued, and she would sell it to me for $500, 5 minutes later she was down to $300..... I gave her $400!

After our skydive Saturday my boss came over so Rob and I could see the car. Now its not the most eye catching car, but I really could care less what it looks like. Its a green 1998 Mitsubishi Magna - a massive car, which is just what we need, in fact, Rob can lay in the trunk of it, and I'm sure I could get in there next to him! 138 000km on it, both highway and city driving, a V6 engine - vroom vroom!! AC, power steering, power locks, and fairly new tires. Now of course its not prefect, the AC doesn't work the best, and it leaks on the floor on the passenger side - nothing a towel on the floor can't fix, the paint has faded - from the extreme sun/temperatures, quite a few dents and nicks, and the key is currently stuck in the ignition. She's had a locksmith come and look at it (a 24 year old punk I was told), he got the key out, put a new barrel in, and when she took it to work, she once again couldn't get the key out! Rob knows a guy at work that is a locksmith and he is going to look at it, and I have since bought a steering wheel lock and I also drape a towel over the wheel - so the steering wheel doesn't get hot ;) I also have a separate key to lock it from the outside so even if someone did get in, they would only go in circles :)

I am taking it in to get serviced on Monday as I need to get the registration renewed by the end of March and each car needs to "pass". As well as it needs an oil change and a general service anyways. A "rego check" here lasts 6 weeks, so I will just renew it before we leave the territory on the last possible day. I'm hoping there is not too much wrong with it, but even if it costs me $1000 to fix up, I only paid $400 for it, so I can't complain!


My boss has taken the car to Broome and back without any problems, and because its such a big car, we can fit everything in that we will need! We will probably get a swag each so we can camp on our travels, and if need be, I'm sure we can sleep IN the car. Even if the car only gets us to Adelaide, it has SO been worth the money already, and its only been 4 days :)

I bought the car that day (right after our skydive, so it was a pretty exciting day!) and we where both so excited to have a car and not have to worry about taking the bus anymore! I'm not constantly checking the time when I'm grocery shopping, we can go see a movie in the evening, and heck, we can even order pizza and GO PICK IT UP!!!!