So today we were supposed to be waiting around, ready to jump when the guys dealing with the customs side of the car said.
When they did finally call us though, it was not good news. To get the car fully imported here in Sydney was going to take 3-4 weeks. This would mean that we were stuck here for a month, or we would have to pay to go somewhere else and then pay to come back to collect the car. Then of course we would only have a matter of days to get the car back to Perth.
The other option was that we entered using the Carnet, and drive across the country in an international car and when we get to Perth we would need to ‘import’ the car. If we went with this option we would hopefully have the car in a week.
So for us there was really no decision. We would drive across with Hugo as an English car and he would be naturalised in WA.
This however did bring up one other issue. Every state has a different rule regarding driving international cars in Australia. In NSW you don’t need any permits or insurance etc, but in other states you do. But in some states you need to prove road worthiness, go over the pits etc etc. The pits itself was not exactly what we were worried about, of course we want to drive a safe car. We were concerned however with the time that these processes would take.
With no car to go and pick up today though we had time to start calling the different states. Many phone calls later, it seems that the easiest thing to do would be to drive straight into SA and get a permit here. We were not required to go over the pits, and third party insurance was included that would cover us in NT and WA as well.
So the day finished with us still not having the car, but at least we had a sort-of plan.
