The search for a VAN!

After spending an evening, rather tipsily mind you, with our friends Matt and Mercedes, we were convinced to go out in search of a van for our remaining seven weeks here. Our long long search began after saying tearful farewells to Jim and Lis. We trailed all the bulletin boards at the backpacker hostels in the Kings Cross area, wrote down about 20 numbers and phoned a good few of them…before realising this really was a silly plan. The vans in our budget were always going to need some work - this could cost us more money than we had PLUS could take us the majority of our time here to fix up. In addition, with insurance and regos and everything, it really was too much to organise for our short time here. We also realised that it could take us the whole time we were here to sell it again!

We thus had no plans STILL after a day all alone and hadn’t reserved anywhere to stay. Crashing at Matt and Mercedes’ place was an amazing save! They cooked us a BBQ while we told them of our lack of van-buying. In true Ozzy style and non-despondence, they helped us find a cheap car rental place which we decided to check out the next day.

After a second long day, this day getting quotes from nine van rental places, we ended up at the place Matt had originally suggested and FINALLY got a car to rent!!

YES, we are spending money that we will never get back BUT, believe it or not, at $40AUS all in, the car rental is way cheaper than two dorm beds in any Australian hostel (such cheap skates, we are!).

We planned to sleep in the car on random roadsides in order to break even somewhat on what we would be spending on hostels…

In an act of pure genius - or pure luck as Chris calls it - I ran across the road while Chris was signing the paperwork to a pawn shop I’d been told about and came back to the rental place weighed down with a gas stove, three pans, a huge plastic storage box, a TENT (AMAZING!!!), mattress and pump, knives, forks, plates, picnic blanket, cool box…. GOSH - all for $80!!! Less than it would cost us for two nights in dorm beds anywhere!

We FINALLY had a plan. At 4pm on a Thursday afternoon in the middle of Australian Summer. Short term it may be - we only rented the car for five days initially! - but at least we were back on track as scrounging backpackers!

All we had to do now was hit the road and… find a place to stick the tent up… for FREE.