We bought a car !

We bought a car today. Now before I tell you which car it is, let me explain why we chose this particular car. First of all , most cars around here are white Japanese cars and for a good reason : They're cheap, white doesn't attract too much heat and they are very reliable. You'll see plenty of Honda, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Subaru and Mazda's ( sorry if I forgot a few makes ). Holden here is considered a "younger generation car" ( read : Pimp car ) and European cars are exclusive cars, mostly driven by ignorant European immigrants who buy their favorite European brand and then find themselves locked to huge service bills and garages refusing to help you.
So that shortens the list quite a lot. If you're 25+ , you really don't want to be seen driving a Holden, and you certainly don't want a Peugeot or Volkswagen or something like that unless you're a millionaire and you import your own spare parts. So the choice over here is pretty much limited to Mazda / Toyota / Subaru / Mitsubishi / Honda. All of them are good cars, they're pretty much all the same in fuel consumption ( their smallest models will have a 140 hp 1.8 engine, their top models anything like a V6 or V8 ).

Now here's where the sheep-technique comes in. Ever been sent to the shop to buy wine for anyone, and found yourself lost in the choice of different wines ? My tactic is simple , just pick the wine that is almost sold out ( the one that everyone else took ). It's guaranteed to be the best ( or at least : a very good ) wine. If you transpose this onto the car market, you'll find that Toyota is a winner. Not by a mile, only marginally more than the others, but still there are clearly more Toyota's on the road here than anything else. ( about 20% of the cars on the road here is a Toyota ). So that choice was made : We will buy a white Toyota. But what make ?

We went to the Toyota dealership and asked if we could test drive their models. To our surprise, they had EVERY possible car available for test drive, and no fuss was made about driving one. You wanna drive a V6 400 horsepower truck, no worries. You'll need to sign a quick insurance waiver ( a A4 that basically tells you that you will be liable for a certain amount of damage if you crash, usually anything between 500 and 3500 dollars ). TIP : This can be an indicator for how good the dealership will be for you by looking at those numbers, the higher they are, the more scroogey they will be and the more expensive your car will be. So if they ask you to sign a waiver at 3500 at one dealership, and 1000 at the other ( for the same car mind you ) then you should try and talk to the dealership with the 1000 waivers.

We sat in a few different models : The Aygo, the Yaris, the Corolla and the RAV4. Anything beyond the RAV4 will cost you serious bucks and also costs a lot to drive ( 17 liters of petrol per 100 kilometers etc ). The Aygo and Yaris are way too small to even consider, if the potholes don't kill you a rampant road train certainly will. So Aygo and Yaris are a big no-no. The choice was really between a Corolla and a RAV4. In other words, the heart versus the head choice. The RAV4 obviously is a lot more expensive than the Corolla and will use more petrol, but then again the RAV4 fits the Australian lifestyle better ( remember : 50% of cars here are SUVs and the cars that aren't SUVs are the big commodores and Aureons with big V6s or V8s ). Compared to the "average" vehicle on the road, a 4cylinder RAV4 would be quite economical , a good trade-off between lifestyle and cheap and green driving. The RAV4's are very popular here , the corolla's are "the wife's car". Also when towing anything of reasonable length or weight ( a boat, a horse trailer, a big trailer for home renovations etc ), the Corolla would not be sufficient whereas a RAV4 would do a good job with ease.

So... we bought the Toyota RAV4 4cylinder !! It's an "Edge" model which includes a lot "dooblies" as the salespeople call them : Roof rails ( not racks, the rails look a lot better and are welded on the chassis and therefor can only be fitted at production of the car) , Luxury steering wheel ( hey , you're gonna be using that about all of the time in the car, it might as well have a good feel ! ), parking sensors in the back ( a little beep that tells you if you are driving back into something ) , tinted glass ( looks cool and IS cool = keeps a lot of heat out of the car ) , 17" alloy wheels, Air Conditioning , Cruise Control etc etc...
We added a Nudge Bar on the front ( like a bull bar but only the middle bit ) and a tow bar at the back ( for our boat trailer, one's gotta have dreams you know ! ) and an integrated SatNav on it since our little Garmin is dying.

All in all it's a super luxurious car that would cost about 50.000 euro's in The Netherlands and which we certainly would never have bought there. We paid a total of 40000 dollars for it : That's 20.000 euro's ! You can buy a second-hand Hyundai Getz with 200.000 mileage on it for that price in Europe, if you're lucky ! Ok , that was exaggerated, realistically you would be able to buy a new Hyundai Getz for that.

We're very happy with the deal, and it only took us two garages and lots of internet research to get this price. On the internet we saw a second-hand RAV4 from 2005 listed for 34900 ( didn't even bother looking at the mileage ) and in another Toyota dealership ( The Toyota dealer in Mango Hill, don't go there ! ) we got a quote of 50.000 for this car.

At Toyota Maroochidore ( good one, go here for good deals ! ) we got a good deal and he threw in a pair of "Bush-tucking lights" on the nudge bar too ( these will cost you 500 dollars new mind you ) so we do some bush driving with it.

The only thing we couldn't get was a WHITE RAV4, which we initially set our mind to. The Edge model is a bit of a sold out model and only red / black / blue / graphite / metallic silver were available. We took the graphite one, it looks real good with the black tinted windows and the nudge bar and roof rails. We actually tested the white versus black car theory by sitting in cars that had been standing in the sun for hours outside the dealership. First we sat in a black car : HOT ! Then we sat in a white car : JUST AS HOT ! No difference at all , apparently it's the interior ( which usually is black ) that attracts the heat more than anything else. So it wasn't a big issue and I must say that graphite grows on you. It's a bit like a light-black ( huh? ) metallic color. Some people call it "carbon" or "charcoal" but it's a bit lighter than that, it's a nice color and we are happy to have chosen it. It's also a metallic paint which in theory is a lot more expensive than the plain white paint.

We decided to fit some extra's in the car which will help protect it from the Queensland sun :
- An electronic rust protector
- UV window protection tint
- Paint protection
- Interior protection

Now whether or not those things work doesn't really matter, I've always been sceptical about it and never really thought they were much use. However, if you buy those items, you will get 10 years ( lifetime, but in reality it's 10 years ) warranty on your paint, your interior , rust. The window protection is also helpful because it will make your car glass darker which looks cool, and it will make it cooler inside when you first step in. Obviously there is no reason to have it past that because you have air conditioning anyway, but it also blocks some UV which is linked to cancer etc. The tinting is also an interesting one. The Queensland law says that all window tinting fitted by a dealer prior to delivery to the customer is street legal. So although we will have a very dark car it will be street legal anyway. There is 10 years warrantee on the tinting, so if there are any bubbles forming after installation ( due to sun, heat or whatever ) then they will fix it for us at no charge. Also , the resale value of the car will go up as will the trade-in. Everything together this cost 2000 AUD dollars but for 10 years warranty on literally everything in your car : You can't really go wrong. Also , I won't get mad when someone spills any coffee on our seats , because I know it will be fixed by the Toyota dealer.

Another great deal that Toyota offers is their 3-year fixed price servicing, which can be ( and we did ) lengthened by another 3 years, so 6 years. You will pay 300 dollars per year to service your car, no matter what's wrong with it : This is what you will pay for 6 years. This is well worth taking up , some other manufacturers also offer this so it's not unique to Toyota here, but it sure isn't the same in Europe. So that's 6 years service and warranty at a fixed price without worries. Good on ya, Toyota !

The average mileage of our RAV4 ( which we will pick up next week, just as our rental expires ) is 9.6/100 , the Corolla had a 7.6/100 so we're using 2 liters more per 100 kilometers. Seeing as the fuel over here is 1,10 dollars ( that's right : about 60 euro cents ! ) and doing 20.000 kilometers on average per year, it will cost us 440 dollars extra ( at current fuel prices ) to drive the RAV4 compared to the Corolla. The insurance ( full comprehensive, which means that if ANY damage is caused by ANYthing , you will be insured for it ) costs 550 dollars per year ( corrolla = 450 dollars ) and the "Reggo" ( taxes etc etc ) cost about 400 per year, about the same as the corolla ( it's calculated per cylinder not quite sure how exactly though, but both have equal cylinders = 4 ).

So, long story short : We'll pick up our new Toyota RAV4 with lots of gadgets up next week ! We'll try and put some pictures up during the weekend. We're still very busy at the moment getting a rental, but that's a separate post.

We got our driver licenses !

Today we crossed a big line : We got our driver licenses ! Now you might think this would be a simple thing to get ( after all, the driver license is nothing more than a piece of ordinary paper printed by a dot matrix printer and your photo next to it, and then plastified with the most normal machines. In other words : It's not a very secure document , in European standards.

However, all is not as it seems. In Australia, your driver license is worth equal identification points to your passport ! This means that you can use your driver license for almost any form of authentication. In fact, your driver license is NEEDED in most cases because without it you will need a proof of settlement in Australia, which is basically a document ( not any document, a legal one ) like a rental agreement, or a home ownership document. These documents are obviously very hard to get initially when you settle in Australia, but here's the good part : The driver license IS SUCH A DOCUMENT ! Your address is printed on it so people readily accept this as a formal proof of settlement in Australia.

Obviously the driver license is THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT document that you will have to get once you settle in Australia, we knew this so we tried to get it asap when we got here. The second day we got here we went into the Road and Transportation Association customer service center ( what a long word that is ). If you have trouble finding them , here's a listing of the addresses of all the RTA offices in Queensland. We went inside and got told that we didn't have enough points to authenticate ( you'll get used to the point system , it's very easy : driver license = 40 points, passport = 40 points, 18+ card = 20 points, medicare card = 20 points, Visa ( which is inside your passport ) = 20 points or something etc etc ). We told her that we just arrived and that we didn't know where to get our points. She said that a Bank Card with our name on it and our signature would be sufficient together with the Visa and the Passport and a Credit Card or foreign Bank Card. You will realize soon that the requirements are flaky at best : In another RTA office we were told completely different things and that lady would accept another document but not the one that the first lady accepted. We found out later that the only REAL authentication you need is a bit of personal charm and flattery towards the person behind the counter, this will get you a lot further. Something like "We just moved here and we love it, (fill in the town you're in) is really beautiful ( doesn't matter if it is or not ) and what lovely beaches and friendly people over here, Queensland definately is the best place on earth !" will be worth a lot more points than any document you can come up with. It took us two days to find this out.

So the first day we failed. We got the application forms with us though, and ended up with this magical combination of points :

- Commonwealth "Change of Address confirmation" that we got when we signed up with commonwealth bank and which states your "new" address which in our case was our B&B for three weeks. TIP: If you're staying in a hotel you're screwed, you won't get anything done since you don't have a real address and the bank ( and everyone else ) DO NOT ACCEPT A POSTBOX ADDRESS. Remember : To get a bank account you will need a telephone ( prepaid, since you cannot get anything else ) and an address. The bank told us they don't use the points system anymore and they will happily help you with just your passport and some flattery-points ( plus the phone number and the address )

- Credit Card ( if you have any ) or your old bank card from your European bank as long as it has a signature on the back ( very important : no signature = no legal document )

- Passport

- Visa ( in our case it's a 175 visa which is in our passport but this is not always the case )

- B&B Booking confirmation + payment slip ( important ! )

Those 5 things will get you a driver's license : But not everywhere.

We went back to Maroochydore RTA customer centre, went in armed with our documents, and here comes the surprise : The classes are different ! So let's say I have a A+B license in The Netherlands ( same as in the UK btw or any other european country ) then that means that I can drive a Motorbike ( A ) and a Car ( B ) without trailer.
In Australia however, that would equate to a C ( Car + Trailer ) and R ( rider = motorbike ) ( you also get RE which is 250CC or lower, make sure you get the full R one , not the RE !! ).
Since I filled in AB in the driver license code on the application form, I got told that they don't accept untranslated driver licenses. I gave her the International Driver License which is a translation of it in english and 50 other languages, after which they got irritated ( our flattery points turned negative right here ) and they
said that that was not a legal document. I told them it was, they looked it up , they said "it's only for driving, not for requesting a driver license" and that was basically it. So we asked what we could do and the lady told us we had to go to the consulate to ask for a translated driver license. A young Danish guy stepped in and told us he had to do the same and showed us his version of his Danish translated driver license. This would take weeks !

But I don't give up that quickly. I had learned and I knew exactly where it went bottoms up : My non-Australian knowledge of their license classes. After all we're talking about the single most important document you'll ever get in Australia : Your driver license. It was late and we had other things to do ( see next post ) so we called it for the day. We did however take a new empty license request form with us, which would come in handy later.

Next day, we decided that we'd note down the addresses of some of the nearby RTA offices ( of which there are many ) and use the GPS navigator ( an old , outdated Garmin Nuvi which doesn't really work well but better still than reading paper maps ) to drive to all of them : If they would decline us the driver license, we'd just move to the next one until we would learn enough about the Australian way to get it without hassle. At home we filled in the empty forms and this time we put "C + R" in them , not "AB".

It proved we're fast learners : The first RTA customer centre we went to was Redcliffe ( Kippa Ring actually ). We came in to the RTA office and there weren't that many people there ( there never are in Australia, but a queue of more than 10 peopls here is considered VERY busy ) I think there were 3-4 people there and after waiting less than a minute we were greeted. Now this is the absolute critical moment in Ozzie socializing behaviour : The greet. It will make or break your entire conversation. If you respond like a Pommie then that's how you will be treated. If on the other hand you respond like an Indian they won't take you seriously.
They have different variations of greets ( to fool the immigrants obviously ) and the game is played like a chess gambit. On opening E2-E4 , the correct response would be D2-D4, but you could also use a E2-E4, after which the horses will come out. If you try and move your rook , they'll figure you out, if you move the A2-A4 pawn they'll think you're a beginner.

"Hi, how are you today, and how may I help ?" ( Whaaaa she played the shrude Sicilian opening, clearly advanced and long-time Australian. )
"Very well thank you. It's lovely weather, what could possibly go wrong today ? We really love this town and love the friendly people over here. How are you ?" ( carefully parried that first move there, if you answer "I'm ok, I need you to convert my driver license" then you just lost the game )
"Fine thanks. Now what can I do for you today ?" ( the original question again, but this time they expect you to answer it )
"We just migrated to Queensland six days ago and we hope to convert our current license into a Queensland driver license. We have read up on the application process and have the completed forms right here, we also brought along the needed documents" ( we're on a win here )
"Let me see that. Oh... wait you have a Commonwealth Change of Address form, but you don't have the Commonwealth Bank Card yet, we'll need some other form of proof of residency from you" ( now, this is a very tactical move, she just moved her Queen and your king is checked. Ofcourse we knew the commonwealth bank documents were sufficient without the bank card, after all we used them in the other RTA office where they were no problem. However, if you play that card it's a check mate and you'll never get your license here. )
"We have the rent agreement with us, will that do ?"
"Hmm... lemme check all that. I'll just copy these documents right here and be right back"

YOU WIN ! She's just been check-mated and will now be open for requests.
15 minutes later and 200 dollars lighter ( 75 for a 5-year driver license and 25 for an 18+ card , times two people ), we got our driver license , and used this driver license to complete the application form for our 18+ card which is also valued at 20 points.
A big job done, especially since we just bought a car ! ( and you need your driver license to buy a car over here, there's no other way )

Maroochydore -> Noosa

Yesterday we drove from Maroochydore to Noosa over the coastal highway. The further north you go , the prettier the places get. Noosa being the "Hollywood of Australia" it's a very pretty place, loads of hills and VERY expensive looking houses ( and they are probably even more expensive to buy than they look ). It's a very touristic place, a bit like Caloundra but instead of highrises they have hills and smaller unit-blocks.
There's nature all over in Noosa and the views to the ocean are priceless. It's not a place that is easy to reach from the civilized world though, it will take you about 40 minutes from Maroochydore to Noosa over the coastline roads, more when there are roadworks ( and there are quite a few roadworks in Queensland : a good thing ). Noosa is too far from the Bruce Highway, and too far from the Sunshine Coast CBD ( Maroochydore ) so it's a place where you retire, not a place you go to work, unless ofcourse you're lucky and work with retirees or in tourism. We liked Noosa. A bit southeast of Noosa you get Sunshine beach, they're pretty close together and you get lovely views over there on the David Low way. Sunshine beach has been developed over the last few years and looks well maintained and there seem to be proud people living over there : Proud of their boats that is, because everyone over there seems to drive boats instead of cars ( boats are all over the carparks / driveways there ). More south is Sunrise beach which has hill tops looking over the ocean and reasonably big houses but fewer boats. The roads get a big bigger over here, people drive a bit faster and this is really the furthest that most Australians will drive to Maroochydore for work. South of Sunrise beach, along the David Low way there is Castaways (beach) which is like a small settlement next to the big open road. However these people have the best views over the ocean that you can imagine, it's a tradeoff between having a "cliffside" house and being next to a busy traffic road ( the David Low way looks more like a motorway here ). Marcus Beach and Peregian beach are nice but didn't impress us as much as the northern suburbs. If you like old original Queenslanders then this is the place to buy one though. You won't have much views but the prices are lower in these area's ( still very unaffordable though, which says less about our financial situation than the dire overpriced housing market in Australia ). Overpriced is ofcourse relative to what you get. Yes you do get a nice view, you get a reasonable plot and the houses are reasonably built, but the wages here don't allow the prices, it's really as simple as that. Jobs here will pay anything from 30.000 AUD ( cleaner / mechanic etc ) to 50.000 AUD ( real estate agents / government jobs / car salesmen ) to 70.000 ( Senior IT with 10+ years experience / Managers / Senior Bank staff ). These wages don't warrant houseprices of more than 250.000 for small worker homes to 500.000 for luxury manager homes. The prices of homes here START at 500.000 for very small and run-down places, and they go anywhere to 3 million and more for the reasonably luxurious places. The very expensive places in and around Noosa reach 5-15 million each, private tennis court included of course.

So, we have decided to rent. You see, the math is quite simple :

A house on the beach ( literally ON the beach ) costs about 500 to rent. This equates to about 26000 per year in rent.
Now, this same house would be on the market for 1 million. That would be about 60000 yearly interest repayments. In other words, we'd be saving 34000 by renting the EXACT same place. And then I'm not even calculating the yearly repairs, the yearly taxes, the insurances, the ACTUAL REPAYMENT OF THE LOAN ( I just calculated the interest repayments, the loan will stay the same unless you pay EVEN MORE than 60000 ).

Yes, the housing market in Australia is in an interesting era. How long will the housing market survive ? I think about 1-2 years, then we'll see a substantial correction either in rental prices ( inflation of wages basically ) or a correction in houseprices ( 50% off at least, a bit more than in the USA ).

Caloundra - > Maroochidore

We visited Caloundra today. It's a touristic place, it's busy and a bit hectic in the centre, but near the beach it's wonderful. Dickie beach is really nice, it was reasonably busy ( only 100 people on 2 kilometers of beach go figure ) and a bit further along the coast there are views of the ocean to kill for. A very nice place but there are better places along the coast, like Coolum Beach for instance, or Yaroomba Beach. We haven't been to every place yet, and Noosa apparently is very pretty also. Between Caloundra and Maroochydore there are a lot of industry parks, a lot of new-builds and it's basically 1 big building pit. Too bad, the region really looks poor there. I'm talking about Wurtulla and the likes, they are being built in by massive building projects, it really ruins most of the landscape so we quickly passed by there and went to Maroochydore. If Caloundra is the tourist centre then Maroochydore is the shopping centre and business centre. Most big companies have settled in Maroochydore and this made the town grow to be the biggest suburb in the Sunshine coast. There's a buzz in Maroochy that just isn't there in Caloundra. Ofcourse, this is our personal opinion only and we never liked highrises and busy area's.

Tomorrow we will do the upper part of the Sunshine Coast : From Maroochy to Noosa.

About the spiders

So far, after 4 days, we have seen 0 spiders. They either hide very well or they are just not as abundant as people wanted to make us believe. No white-tails, no red-backs, nothing. Not 1 spider anywhere to be seen and believe me we looked for them everywhere. We did however see whales in the sea and a wild kangaroo in the middle of a field, many birds and some friendly bugs. No snakes, no spiders, no nasties.

I will keep you updated if we spot any :)

Medicare, Bank, Driver's License, Tax file number etc

On the second day we started to get organized. Most shops are open on saturday and sunday over here, but they close around 17:00. We went back to the Sunshine Coast and this time we went to the Sunshine Plaza in Maroochydore : A fantastic shopping centre that has it all. We first went to the driver license office where we couldn't get our license because we needed an Australian bank card for identification purposes. We went to the bank ( Commonwealth or CBA in short ) and couldn't get a bank card because we didn't have a phone number. So we went to the phone shop and couldn't get a phone because we didn't have a bank account. Chicken and egg.

So after some thinking we bought a prepaid phone which didn't require a bank card, got a bank account from the CBA using our prepaid phone, got our medicare arranged too and filed for a TFN ( which we will need to give to the bank still ) which will all pretty much arrive in 2-3 weeks except the CBA which should arrive in 4-5 days.
The only problem we had is that all of these required an address, but they will happily use the address of our rental ( B&B room ) so we used that. We told em to use a "paperless" account which means you get all your mail online, saves the hassle.

Then we went to the Woolies ( Woolworths ) and got our first things :
- Notebook to write down things in ( should have brought this from Europe... doh )
- Some bread + muesli + milk ( "Light White" milk tastes good we think )
- 2 Australia -> Euro converter plugs for 220 volts ( laptops / music etc )
- Danish Cheese ( Arla : The best cheese in the world , round and red )
- Meat ( burgers + Steak )
- Mayo
- Butter

And some more stuff. We bought 3 small peanutbutters ( all different ones ) but we threw them all out because they tasted like american / english peanutbutter. We might have to buy some Calve in the Dutch Shop in Brissie or Caloundra.

The day was over quickly and we had a cookie for dinner and some bread, still jetlagged from our travels.

Coolum Beach + Yaroomba

After we left the Toyota dealership, pretty amazed by the prices of new cars over here ( positively surprised that is ) we went to Coolum Beach where we saw our first glimpse of the ocean.

IT IS BEAUTIFUL ! It's amazing, the water is so clear that you can see 10 meters deep and it's a beautiful light blue color. Beautiful white sandy beaches complete this picturesque image. It's truly amazing. Kim says it looks like Capetown in South Africa ( a place she loves ). We spotted whales in the distance, it really is like living in a dream. This is when we remembered what we all did it for and it was like getting our reward for all our hard work and 1.5 years waiting.

After Coolum Beach we went to Yaroomba where went to see this home which proved to be a real dump. It would take at least 100.000 to make it liveable and we didn't like the neighborhood. The electric wires in the middle of the ocean view are terrible and there were some other issues with a homeless man living under the house ( we went to see the house without notifying the owner or the real estate agent ). We decided not to proceed with it and not even make an offer because quite frankly the property ( if you can still call it that ) was worth more in the region of 100.000 than 629.000. We decided to rent for the first 6 months and we would look for some nice rental places on the internet before we would even consider buying a place.

Quite frankly, Ozzie houseprices are completely out of synch with reality. Houses here start at a minimum of 400.000 ( a complete dump in a reasonable neighborhood or a new house in a complete dump ) but if you want anything nice, you'll be spending around 750.000. Now, that 750.000 dollar house, you can RENT for 300 per week.

Quick maths tell anyone ( except an ozzie ) that renting is MUCH better financially than buying. The root of this problem is CGT and GST tax returns and some other things like the "australian dream of owning your own home".

TIP : Don't buy a home until the houseprices dropped at least 50%. Or buy it now at a 50% discount, whichever suits you :)

Gary Crick car dealership

After our lovely drive over the Sunshine Motorway ( which is just off the Bruce Highway ) which boasts lovely palm trees and gumtrees all over, our first task was to find a car. We had rented our Thrifty Ford Focus for only 3 weeks and thus would need another car quickly. We did some research prior to coming over here and found out that second hand cars are very very pricey here. As an example, a second hand Subary Forrester with 150000 kilometers and 7 years old will still cost you about 17000 dollars. A completely new Forrester including 3 years warranty costs 32000 : You do the math and quickly come to the conclusion that buying second hand cars is not something you do lightly, especially when you find out that Queensland has no M.O.T. test at all ! You can buy a barrel of rust for 17000 or a reasonable second hand with 150000, but we didn't want to take that risk. I always liked VW Golf new DSG automatic , and thus we went in and checked the Golf dealership. To make a long story short : A 1.6 TDI DSG7 automatic Golf with air conditioning and no further extra's will cost you 40000 dollars. That's about 22000 euro's which would still be a reasonable price in Europe. The problem , as we later found out from someone we met in a grocery shop, is that European cars aren't accepted in any garage over here, and you'll pay dearly for any repairs at an official VW dealer, who ofcourse knows that he is the only one who has the parts from Europe. This would be a very , very expensive mistake. We left Gary Crick's VW dealership and never looked back.

On the other side of Gary Crick was a Toyota dealership though, so we decided to have a look there. We had to walk all the way around because BOTH dealerships had built big walls between the VW and Toyota dealerships, something that made me think a little of the Berlin wall, but it's length was more reminiscent of the Chinese wall. After going all the way around the wall, we finally walked onto the Toyota dealership. We were amazed how cheap the toyota's sell for here. A brand new Toyota Corolla Edge , including 16" wheels, navigation GPS, 1.8 VTTi engine and LOADS more options was priced at 28.000 AUD dollars ( RRP = Retail Price, which means you can usually get around 10% off this price ). Dealers here love to haggle about prices, so make sure you always pay less than 10% of the RRP ( they are legally obliged to quote you the RRP using their computer systems ). They are only allowed here to speak in "Drive Away Prices" which means that whatever they quote you is what you pay at the counter and drive off. There are no hidden costs after this.
When I say there are no hidden costs, I'm actually lying , because although your car will drive fine, you'll find out that the sun and sea salt will have a disastrous effect on your car's overall health, so you really need to protect it. They have a whole arsenal of apparatus to fight this, and this could be seen as a "hidden cost" although technically you can drive away just fine and have no trouble for 1-2 years. A few of the options are buying 35 tinted windows ( keeps the car cooler when standing in the sun all day ) and paint protection and rust protection. When I say "protection" it basically means you get 10 year warranty on the paint and rust of the car : If the sun bleaches it, you get a new paint job , if there's a little rust, it's insured too. It's worth getting these extra's because they will make your car a lot more valuable in a few years down the road ( hence, now you understand why the second hand cars are so pricey ). There are a lot of other options beyond titanium paint, ECI ( electronic rust inhibitor which prevents rust ) and tinted windows which block 65% light and 98% UV ( helps against cancer, some people say ). The tinted window foil is placed on top of the already tinted windows so the car will have very dark windows ( but they all have that over here ). Some options are definately worth getting, and personally I would choose the Tint, the ECI and the titanium paint job, because they will ensure your car will maximize resale value in the future. You can only fit some of these options ( like the paint for instance ) when you initially buy the car because it's basically like an extra coating of very strong protection-paint, so choose wisely.

We did not decide what to buy that day. Perhaps a Golf, or a Corolla, or a Tiguan, or a Rav4. And that was just the two dealerships we went to , there are plenty other dealers here who all want your business and will fight for it ( price-wise ).

From what we have seen on the roads here, this is how the cars are divided :
20% of all cars are Toyota
15% of all cars are Mitsubishi
15% of all cars are Mazda
15% of all cars are Subaru
15% of all cars are Holden
5% of all cars is Nissan
1% is Peugeot + VW + mercedes + BMW ( these are very very exclusive cars here )
We never saw a Renault, I think they don't exist over here. We saw 1 ( !!! ) Peugeot and about 10 volkswagens ( compared to about 100000 Toyota's ).

50% of all cars are SUVs. Small cars are almost non-existant and the smallest engines here are 1.8 liter 130 HP cars ( 100 kw ). Big sedan cars like Holden Aurion or Toyota Camry are very popular here too. Either people have a big sedan, or a big SUV.

Small cars are for "men who sit down to pee" ( gays )

Waking up to Jumanji Orchestra

I slept steady through the night, and we woke up around 05:00 AM, the sun was slowly coming up and there were noises we never heard before, it sounded like a jungle, it was nice to hear something different than crows fighting over a piece of your roof back in Europe. We realized that morning that we didn't check the bed for spiders, nor the bathroom, nor anything else for that matter : We were so tired that we just didn't think of it, and happily fell asleep. Dale had left us some bread with ham and some cookies which we ate for breakfast. The early morning weather was reasonably cold and dew was on the table and chairs outside. It was officially friday and thus people were already going to work around 06:00 including Dale who had a job in Dicky Beach ( Sunshine Coast ). Around 06:30 we decided to check out those terrible traffic jams on the Bruce Highway that we heard everyone talk about. When we drove over the Bruce Highway which leads up from Mango Hill where our rental room is, to the Sunshine Coast we didn't notice a single traffic jam. It was a little clogged up, something that European's would call "driving 90 instead of 110" at some points but the traffic was really enjoyable, after 20 kilometers north of Brisbane the traffic thinned out completely and we drove without problems to the Sunshine Coast. Now I must admit this is the Schoolies period ( Like Spring Break in the USA ) where kids have 2 weeks holiday after getting their diploma's. Perhaps that's why there's less traffic but as far as we know, there just aren't any traffic jams on the Bruce Highway at all. In fact, till today I yet have to see even a small 100meter traffic jam, let alone the 20kilometers long daily "dutch jams" which I imagine are similar to the M1 and M4 near London each morning. Nothing like that over here, people already complain about heavy traffic when they can see more than 10 cars on the road : You get the picture.

Arrival in Brissie

After the cold night in the plane from Singapore to Brisbane it was a relief to be in the warmer Airport hall. Again there is air conditioning everywhere so it's never really hot anywhere. After we passed the initial "stamp booth" where a customs officer stamped out date of arrival and thus activated our visa, we picked up our luggage from the conveyor belts and proceeded to the long queue which had formed at the border security tables. There were 4 tables and there were two customs officers at each table. There was also a waggly dog and if he sat down next to your bags you'd be in BIG trouble ( dog sitting down = drugs detected ). We had filled in the little cards that you get in the plane from Singapore to declare some wooden items and some leather bag. We were surprised that about 80% of the people all declared something. If they pick you out of the line ( we were picked out ) and you don't have anything declared on paper then they will search your bags, which can take up to 2-4 hours. If you have declared something, they will put your bags through the Xray and if they see nothing strange you can go. This happened to us and before we knew it we were in Australia.
We picked up our car from Thrifty Rentals ( Tip : Thrifty Rental cars is the cheapest rental there , we checked ) and got our bags in the trunk and very carefully inspected the car from inside to make sure there were no big spiders in ambush mode ready for the attack on us. It was dark and thus this barely helped and we stepped in hoping that the spiders would leave us alone. ( of course, there wasn't a single spider anywhere near ).

Driving on the left side of the road was surprisingly easy considering we had just done 27 hours travel. The hardest part is the positioning of the mirrors which are completely different when sitting on the "right" side. We brought our Garmin Nuvi with us ( which I already had installed the Australian maps on in Europe ) and simply put the address in there and this helped a lot : The ease of GPS !

We were greeted by Dale , the home owner here who rents the room out to migrants. It's a smallish room of about 4 by 5 meters + ensuite bathroom. There are cooking plates in the room but we haven't used them for several reasons ( smelly food in the bedroom is not fun ). We do however use the small gas BBQ outside almost every day to cook our meat on, but more on that later. Dale showed us around the place and gave us the keys, we all needed to get up early the next morning and decided to call it a night.

Singapore

Singapore Airlines crew was very nice during the flight. You get plenty of food and there are games and movies on demand on your private TV screen which is in the back of the chair in front of you. You can order any drinks ( including wine and strong drinks etc and cola and 7up, tomato juice , apple juice ) you want free of charge. Also, you can order in-between-meal sandwiches which were better than I expected them to be. I decided to close my eyes the whole flight, not sleeping but trying to get some rest and not use the TV's and games. Kim would mostly be watching TV and play some games : She's more comfortable in planes than I am. The flight was very smooth , no turbulence at all and before we knew it we were in Singapore ! Singapore was warm and there was a tropical storm raging there ( it somehow formed within 5 minutes after we landed and only lasted about 2 hours ). The airport was a delight : It was silent and clean and not crowded at all ( makes you wonder how one of the biggest airports in the world can be less crowded than unheard-of Schiphol ). The airport itself was huge : 3 terminals with robotic light-rail trains connecting each of them. Each building has air conditioning so you feel rather cold than warm, so we were glad we were wearing woolen pullovers. We looked up prices of camcorders because we want to buy one and thought Singapore would be cheaper , however we were surprised to find out that Singapore electronics are MORE EXPENSIVE than european electronic shops, EVEN with the duty free. ( later we found out that Australian shops are cheaper than European ones, so we were quite happy we didn't buy the camcorder in Singapore or Europe ). After 3 quick hours ( 2 of them were spent shopping ) we headed for our gate which was a train ride and some conveyors further. We got on board without problems and before we knew it we were on our way to our final destination : Brisbane Airport ! The flight was very cold, we had 1 tshirt , 1 woolen pullover and 3 blankets ( courtesy of Singapore Airlines ) on us. With 3 blankets the cold was ok, but I was glad I wore a lot of clothes. A lot of people were sneezing and caughing at the end of the flight ( including Kim ) but I was lucky enough to have escaped the ordeal : I had my eyes closed all the time and was snuggling under 3 blankets :) I actually managed to get 4 hours sleep on this flight which was a total of 7,5 hours. The original flight from Amsterdam to Singapore was 13 hours ( we had tail wind and did it in 12 hours ). Again plenty of food, good service and no crying kids, we felt really lucky.

Our first post from Australia !

It's been three days since we arrived in Australia now and it's time to post an update on what has been going on since our last post. After our last post, we packed our suitcases and our laptops plus some last minute packing. We went to the Schiphol airport around 13:00 together with our parents who wanted to wave us off at the terminal. Around 15:00 we arrived at the airport hotel called CitizenM and which is really nice. It's a smallish room but you got everything there and there's plenty of gadgets for the 30+ kids , so we weren't bored. Also free movies on demand and easy check in and check out ( all done with computers , very fast and efficient ) made our stay at the CitizenM very comfortable. We had a Burger King meal at the airport but they did have sandwiches at the hotel in case we wanted something healthier. At 19:00 we went to bed, the sound insulation in the hotel was so good that we could not hear the planes taking off 100 meters down the runway ( no idea how they do that ). I didn't get much sleep that night, perhaps I dozed for about half an hour or so but the stress of the emigration kept me up most of the night. That said, just laying on the bed proved to be enough anyway. We woke up at 07:20 and after showering and having a takeaway brekkie we walked to the terminal ( 3 minutes walk ) and checked in our luggage around 09:00. Our luggage was about 5 kilo's overweight but Singapore Airlines was very friendly and didn't charge us extra. In total our luggage weighted 75 kilo's ( and as emigrants we were allowed 30 kilo's per person ) and we had about 12 kilo's of hand luggage with us ( mostly the breakable stuff like laptops and mediaplayers and the like ). After checking in we met up with the parents in the terminal and stood outside in the fresh air for about 1 hour till we decided to go catch our flight ( which was scheduled for boarding at 11:30 ). One thing I never got used to in The Netherlands was the constant amalgamation of human presence. Wherever I would stand, there'd be 2-4 people within a minute and this "group effect" only got worse. After 1 hour of standing outside , I counted about 22 people who amalgamated around my presence. Strangely, when we got there, we were the only ones. I will never get used to it; it's typical Dutch herding mentality and you see it on campings too. If you see a group of caravans standing on top of eachother with wide space everywhere else , then you can bet they are dutch. Anyway, back to where we were : The goodbye's.

The farewells were hard. Our parents and Lex's brother were there to wave us off. I think I only saw my mother cry once before and that's when my grandmother passed away. It was a difficult goodbye, tears and quick jokes to 'keep the spirits high' all over the place. The queue was quite long and by the time we were at passport control, we lost sight of them. After passing by the passport control, we moved to the gate and grabbed a chair at the gate opposite of ours ( less crowded, but the same views ) and sat down for an hour and went to the toilet a few times : I've never been an easy passenger I must admit, however when I pilot something myself then I love it : I think the loss of control is what gets to me. Don't like trains, don't like planes ; never have and never will. We got on board the plane and after a short taxi we were off in the air !

It felt good to leave Europe behind.

Counting days : Our last post from The Netherlands

Well, this will be our last post from The Netherlands. We are leaving for the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport in 5 hours where we have booked a Hotel for the night. We want to go to bed around 20:00 tonight in order to get a good rest before the flight. We have been getting up at 07:00 every day for the last week and it helped us feel more relaxed during the day. Our flight leaves at 11:30 on Wednesday ( Singapore Airlines ) and we will arrive early morning on Thursday. The total trip takes 27 hours so we will try and get some sleep on the second flight from Singapore to Brisbane. We took some flight tablets with us ( PrimaTour ) which hopefully will make our flights a little less aggravating. We got some pictures today from our Puppy and our Puss ! Puss looked a bit angry and unsettled, the puppy looked a bit lost also, but they are both doing reasonably ok and Lex has taught our Puppy what the words "We'll be back" mean so he's convinced the Puppy will tell the Puss that everything is indeed ok and that we will be picking them up in 3.5 weeks. Lex has a job interview next week , a job on the Sunshine Coast ! It's a simple job fixing desktop computers, but it would be a nice start and most importantly it will be on the Sunshine Coast. We are weighing our bags at the moment and making sure none of the bags is heavier than 32 kilo's while taking as much as possible of course. We have gotten everything we wanted to take with us and everything's ready. Some final dust cleaning to leave the house clean when we leave, and then we wait a few hours.
We'll be glad when we finally land in Brisbane and we can stop counting days, hours , minutes. And then we'll catch ourselves counting "Only 3 weeks till we can pickup the pets"

two more sleeps !

I still remember like the day of yesterday when we said "Only 5 months now". Well, guess what ? Now it's only 2 more sleeps ! It's scary and exciting and a mix of emotions all at once. Tuesday we will be leaving for the Hotel in Amsterdam Schiphol ( the Airport ) and stay there for the night. The Hotel is at walking distance from the departure hall so we don't have to worry about parking tickets, breakdowns or flat tires or anything else actually : It's a real nice feeling and it's a great way to start a long trip like this one.

Our parents will be there to wave us off at the airport ( they have booked a hotel in the area also ) so we'll probably see some tears flowing. Before they know it they will say "Only 5 months now" :)

Flight Tracker

By now, everyone will have lost the Flight Tracker links I'm sure, so here they are again due to popular demand :

Brisbane arrivals :
http://bne.webtrak-lochard.com/template/index.html

Singapore tracker :
http://www.flightview.com/TravelTools/default.asp

They work by following the plane beacon that every commercial plane is obliged to have on board and which transmits data every so many seconds. This data is then plotted on google maps ( or microsoft Live maps ) and results in an actual location plot of the plane. Good luck tracking us :)

Our pets have landed !

We tracked the plane that our pets were on and they have just landed. We hope they are all right and we'll call the Sydney quarantine on Monday to make sure they are OK.

Puppy and Puss are on the plane !

This morning was an early one, we stood up at 04:00 AM in order to be in front of the dutch traffic jams. It's good we did too, because when we left at 05:00 AM , the roads were already getting busier. This is one big part of The Netherlands that I will never miss : The insane traffic. We packed the Puss and the Puppy in their transporter boxes which we already bought 1 year ago to get them acclimatized, and set sail ( wheel ) to VCK Live Animal Transports at the Amsterdam Airport. The roads were incredibly busy but we only had two small 1-2 kilometers of traffic jams, which is a lot better than the usual 30-80 kilometers of traffic jams every morning on that road. Ofcourse, you have to get out of bed at 04:00 for this luxury.
When we arrived we were greeted by the very friendly Linda from VCK who seemed to have done this thing a million times before : Something that was reassuring. She took some photocopies of everything, then put them in a few different envelopes and went to get the animals. We had to replace Puss's quarters with a certified kennel-carrier, but the Puppy had a certified one which saved us 200 Euro's. They will arrive in about 24-27 hours from now in Sydney and go in quarantine for 30 days. Brisbane doesn't have a quarantine quarters so we'll have to pick em up by car , which is ok because we'll see some of Sydney too.

We miss our babies a lot.

How much is 1 cubic meter ( 1m3 ) ?

I had trouble at first to imagine how big 1m3 really was. Was it 17 boxes, 10 boxes, 5 boxes ? And how big were those boxes ? Well, here are two pictures of how much 1m3 really is ( 6 big boxes + 2 small ones in our case ). I put the shoe and water bottle (1.5 liters) on there so you have a reference to the dimensions of the boxes. ( Uninteresting trivia : it's a real Harley-Davidson shoe that we bought in America while we did the Route66 on our rented Harley Davidson motorbikes ! )

1 week to go , keeping it stress-free is the challenge

We've recently been cleaning up ( read : eating ) the freezer. Some stuff in there would have better gotten thrown away so we feel a bit nauseous from the spaghetti two days ago. Decided not to clean up the freezer and just throw away everything : Much safer this way. We'll buy some veggies and some breads to clear this last week. I have a tendency to get sick in planes when I don't sleep enough or eat fast food, so we'll go to bed at 21:00 every day from now on, then wake up at 07:00 so that we don't feel bad when we stand up at 08:00 on the departure date. We have ordered a Hotel at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam within walking distance of the Terminal. It's well worth saving ourselves the hassle and stress of standing in traffic jams, or worse a car breakdown or flat tire.

Our dog and cat are due to leave in two days from now, we'll miss them to bits !

I got back one application response and this was a very positive one : The unfortunate part is that the job is offered in Darwin, which would completely change our plans and preparations so far, so I have declined the job offer/interview for now. I hope to find something in Brissie or Sunshine Coast. Once there, things will hopefully move faster and I'm sure that once we settle we'll get into the mouth-to-mouth job market and opportunities will arise that aren't on seek.com.au and mycareer.com.au.

The choice is really a simple one :
- Follow our hearts = Sunshine Coast for the lifestyle and beaches and nature
- Follow our heads = Brisbane City for the job opportunities and the money

They say there are many ways to get rich and only one of them is made of money.
That said, we don't want to end up without a job either. This recession doesn't make our choice any easier. We have also been playing our heads with starting a new company in Australia, something that we have been thinking of doing for quite a while. We fully understand the risks and the time involved because both our parents had their own companies, so we're not going in completely blind.

Choices choices ...

2 weeks to go : Bring it on !

We still find it hard to believe that in 2 weeks we will be in Queensland ! We still haven't decided where to go to but we're pretty sure that it's somewhere in the region of Gold Coast - Brisbane - Sunshine Coast. We have been thinking hard about what we really wanted out of this move and we both concluded that we want a change in lifestyle. Ideally we hope to settle on the Sunshine Coast. I have sent three job applications so far and Kim has sent in one. We can always find work in North Brisbane and drive back and forth until the recession is over. We are pretty confident of finding work in Brisbane. Our big adventure is about to start !

European Health Insurance Card + International Driver's License ordered.

Today we ordered our European Health Insurance Cards through www.ehic.nl and they should arrive within a week from now. These passes are accepted in Australia as official health insurance cards. Let's hope we won't need them ! I also got my International Driver's License from the local ANWB shop ( 13 euro's ). As soon as we arrive in Australia we will convert both into Australian versions but at least we will be fully covered during our flight and arrival. My all-year-round travel insurance will cover any money lost and / or motored vehicle accidents during our initial days.