Nullarbor Road Trip - Part 1 (of a series)

Location: Fremantle
Weather: Too warm

So there I was in Adelaide and I had to get to Perth - quite a long distance. I had 3 options :
1) fly there like most people do - didn't really want to do that -
2) take the train/bus there - the Greyhound bus takes 3 days - no thanks! the train also takes 3 days on The Indian Pacific and I didn't really want to do that.
3) DRIVE there - across the infamous and legendary Nullarbor - which is what I've wanted to do since before I left England

After phoning many rip-off con-shop rental companies like Avis, Thrifty, Hertz etc (I cannot emphasize how much I despise them after finding the same dead-ends several times this year) who charge hundreds of dollars just to drop the car off at a different destination than you hire it at, I was left with one option. Buy a vehicle. Despite considering doing this for several months previously, I was a bit hesitant due to everybody and every book/website/advice-place in the world hollering on about how 'what if you breakdown on the road and get stuck' and I had heard many stories of people buying $2000 cars and having to spend $2000 repairing them. Anyways, I therefore had in mind it would be best to buy from a dealer. So I wandered around Adelaide wondering what to do, because every car I'd seen advertised was well over my sub $1500 budget, except one which was a private backpacker sale that looked a bit dodgy - I had actually test driven another $1000 backpacker car in Sydney and the transmission was definitely suspect, even though it was a 1991 car! Anyways, somehow I went into a random hostel, found a backpackers magazine and in it there was an advert for Boomerang Cars which was literally just down the road. I thought I might as well take a look. As it happened, the manager Nick was a really top bloke and as chance would have it he had a car for $1000. It was a white 1983 automatic 2.6 litre Mitsubishi Sigma station wagon. As Nick said "it's not a pretty looking car, but it's mechanically sound". To cut a long story short I bought the thing! And here it is:

Not a pretty car, how dare he! This machine was a true babe magnet if there ever was one, especially with me in it!
The next day, I drove around Adelaide a bit, bought some much needed supplies, in between rushing back and forth to pay parking fees and went to Glenelg beach. This was, as could be guessed, a beach which errrm had a pier and an historic tram that goes to it. After this excitingness I began my epic journey to Perth. Driving half the time in the dusk/dark, I managed to clock up about 200kms of the 2500km journey along Highway 1 and made it to Port Pirie. Almost every shop was shut, except Coles (hooray) and I slept the night in the driver's seat at an Information bay a few km's out of town. Wasn't too bad, the seat was quite soft and I had my sleeping bag and travel pillow!

By JamesReed on 11.12.04 @ 01:38 PM GMT