Buying A Bitsashitty From Japanese Robbers

In yesterday's post, one of the eight fascinating facts I offered up to you strange people of the worldwide interweb was that I had visited seven of the eight Australian States and Territories, and that I missed out on the Northern Territory because of an exploding car engine.

Ole Blue The Heretic asked me to expand on this story, so I'm publishing an email sent to friends and family on February 1st 2004, shortly after the incident occurred:

Hello everybody, hope you are all well and not dying of hypothermia in the Arctic wastelands of northern Europe. Perth is almost unbearably hot during the day now, and we haven’t seen anything you could properly call rain since we were in Singapore six weeks ago (although Melbourne and Brisbane have been battered by huge storms which have caused floods big enough to submerge cars – thankfully that is 5000 miles away!)

The fact that we’re in Perth at all is due to a series of events which has given me the impression that we’re doomed to stay here forever more. Initially we arrived here just before Xmas, with the intention of finding jobs for a couple of months. The only problem with that plan was that there weren’t many jobs worth doing that were available to travelers (we’re only allowed to work in one job for three months at a time). So after a month or so of generally fruitless searching, albeit with a combined total of six days work between us for the month to show for our endeavours, we decided that our best option would be to buy a car and head south for some fruit picking work.

We purchased a decent-looking Mitsubishi Station Wagon from a Japanese couple, after test driving it and making sure that it wasn’t a battered old heap. After collecting the car on the Friday, we decided to spend the weekend visiting the Pinnacles desert 400km north of Perth, to see the standing stones and the stromatolites (the oldest life on Earth).

Two hours into our four-hour journey, the car began to lose power, eventually dying by the side of a near-deserted stretch of highway. For anyone picturing a small country road in the middle of nowhere, please take into account the fact that Western Australia is a state one-and-a-half times the size of the UK and Ireland put together, and that only 2.5 million people live in this huge expanse of nothing, 1.5 million of them in Perth. We are talking SERIOUSLY deserted stretches of road.

Looking under the bonnet of the car, smoke was rising from puddles of oil which had spurted from some mysterious fissure in the engine, which, despite an almost complete lack of mechanical knowledge, I deduced was not a good sign.

Fortunately, we had trundled to a halt near a small farmhouse, and I walked across to ask for the use of a phone. As this farmhouse was also running a small business selling watermelons and grapefruit, we also hoped for some refreshments while we awaited the arrival of our knight in shining tow truck.

As I approached the porch of the house, a woman emerged, eying me with a look of disdain as if I were about to deposit a decomposing skunk upon her doorstep. Explaining that our car had just broken down, I asked if I could call a local mechanic, to which this cheerful businesswoman replied “No” and walked off, possibly to torture small children in an outhouse somewhere. Completely unprepared for this event, I could only gaze open-mouthed before heading back to the car.

Now our only option was to use my British mobile phone to call the RAC in Australia. So for the next 20 minutes I patiently tried to explain to the monkey on the other end of the line that no, I wasn’t a member, and that yes, I would like to have somebody rescue our car, preferably before we had to resort to cannibalism to survive. Twenty pounds worth of exasperated conversation later, with the added treat of the $158 membership fee on top, we were promised that the mechanic would be with us in an hour.

Sure enough, he arrived at the allotted time, tried the engine a couple of times and declared that there was nothing he could do. Our options then were to get the car towed to the nearest town, Gin Gin, for free or anywhere else for $1 per kilometer. As Gin Gin is over 2hrs from Perth, we weren’t especially keen to take the car there, so we began the journey back to Perth. About an hour into the journey, Patrick (the mechanic) reminded us that we would have to pay $1 per km to Perth AND BACK, which would have cost us another $200+. So we decided instead to leave the car outside a garage in the town of Wannerroo, an hour from Perth by bus.

Which is where it still is two weeks later, having a replacement engine fitted. I think the only suitable name for the car now is Titanic, collapsing as she did on her maiden voyage. The car originally cost us $2500, a sum which has now inflated to $5200, money which has taken us exactly nowhere.

As a result, we are now back in Perth, in the same flat, with no realistic chance of moving in the near future. We’ve both found jobs in a British theme pub round the corner from the flat, [Miss Girlfriend] behind the bar, me collecting glasses, which is at least letting us pay the rent and feed ourselves on pasta. The pub is called the Elephant and Wheelbarrow, part of a chain across Australia, so if we can ever get to Melbourne or Sydney, we might be able to transfer across there. Although the 10pm-5am shifts are a bit of a weekend killer, the house band on a Friday is a pretty good Beatles tribute band, followed on Saturdays by a 70s and 80s cover band (the only band I’ve ever heard follow a Cyndi Lauper cover with Ram Jam’s Black Betty), which means it’s definitely not the worst job I’ve ever had.

Aside from this rather lengthy tale of misery, there’s not much else to tell. We’ve visited Rottnest Island, about 20 miles from Perth in the Indian Ocean. It’s the only place in the world where you can see wild Quokkas. A Quokka is a cat-sized marsupial with a long rat-like tail, and they are in over-abundant supply on Rottnest. The only real way to see the island is by bike, so we spent a day cycling round, and every time we stopped we were approached by groups of Quokkas looking for food and attention. We’ve got loads of photographs of them, should anybody want to see exactly what I’m talking about.

The only other event of any note was Australia Day last Monday, a nationwide celebration of all things Oz. [Miss Girlfriend], myself and our flatmate Leah spent most of the day on the bank of the Swan River, watching air shows, water displays and other entertainments, which culminated in a spectacular fireworks display from boats in the middle of the river and from the tops of the Perth CBD skyscrapers. There was also a fairly decent concert televised from Canberra, on a day which is as much an excuse for alcoholic over-indulgence as anything else.

Well, this episode of our adventures over, I am going to finish here. Keep in touch folks (thank you all my Celtic-supporting acquaintances, I am now well aware of the famous Glasgow Rangers’ capitulation in the Old Firm match, and of the gap at the top of the SPL, you may cease the reminders at any time).

Our address, should anyone wish to send cans of Irn Bru or UN-style food parcels is [address deleted to protect the current residents from the strange folk of the worldwide interweb].

And that is the sorry tale of the exploding Australian Mitsubishi. We did eventually get the car back, and managed to drive it all the way across Australia from Perth to Melbourne, eating and sleeping in it along the way. We made some good friends in Perth as well, so having to spend four months there wasn't so bad after all.