Hi guys,
after a few days in Cairns, our road trip is about to begin.
But before we could start we had to buy a car, change the rego, open a bank account, get insurance for the car, and get a tax file number.
As you see we had to do a lot of stuff. But let us start at the beginning:
Nearly one year ago, we saw this van in a Facebook group and texted the person selling the van if he could tell us to who he sold it. As we liked it so much Felix told me to text the person who sold it. So did I and three weeks ago the former car holder text me that she’s going to sell the car in Cairns – exactly the city where we started our trip at the time we wanted to start it. So we met her on Saturday afternoon, the day we arrived and decided to buy the van – a Mercedes Benz MB 100 D.
And again we were very lucky. In Queensland, the Australian state where we are, you have to get a roadworthy certificate (RWC) to get the registration of a vehicle or to change the holder. If you want to get this certificate you have to go to a mechanic to do a check and if he sees that there are stuff to fix you need to fix it before getting the certificate. The funny or better say ridiculous thing is that possibly the mechanic wants you to fix a broken window lifter although it isn’t necessary and you spend easily AUS$300 to AUS$500. Though the good thing was that the former car holder had to expand the rego one month ago and we could use the RWC she got for expanding the rego.
So we changed the rego to our name and just needed to find a third party property insurance. Although many backpackers decided not to get another insurance but the third party personal insurance you get by having rego, we wanted to have one. In the end, we got the insurance from Westpac which costs AUS$40 per month and has an excess of AUS$1100.
We also opened a bank account at Westpac which is called Westpac Choice. It’s for free the first year but if you want to work you need a bank account so we got this one. Another important thing was to open the bank account during the first days in Australia as after six weeks you need proof of your residential address but opening it before you don’t need one.
Furthermore, we got an Australian tax file number with it you only pay 15% of taxes instead of 45%. Although it was said you should plan at least 30 minutes to do all the paperwork on the internet we did both within 15 minutes.
So that’s all the stuff we had to do during the last week. Luckily our hostel “Dreamtime travellers rest” was perfect for sleeping and relaxing while doing all these things we had to do.
I leave you a few impressions of Cairns:
After getting all the unnecessary stuff out of the car and buying things we still needed we started our trip on Friday. And now we are in Mission Beach at a lovely camping spot by the beach.
See you,
Fiana