1988 Ford LaserAfter we got home from California, we decided to buy ourselves a car. We did 8 months without one and decided that now that the baby is a bit older, we should start taking weekends trips to discover the country around us.
After hemming and hawing for a few weeks, we finally settled on that beauty above. The price was right and the best part is that it only has 50,000 kms! Sure, it doesn't have power steering or fuel injection, but it does have air conditioning and new tires.
Car insurance as we know it costs about the same as it does at home, but registration (or "rego" as they call it here) is quite expensive! We paid close to $700 to register the car for the year. Half of the rego goes to a different insurance company for Compulsory Third Party (CTP) insurance. CTP covers damages to the other guy in case of an accident and our personal insurance pays damage to our car. That means we still paid about $350 to the state to register a 21-year-old car.
Nate still bikes to work, so Rox and I have the car all day to putter around town. We're expecting another lot of visitors this week (Eddie and Lisa's parents on a layover from PNG on Wednesday, Eliza and Andrew on Thursday, Becky and Lindsay on Monday), so picking them all up from the airport will be a breeze!
