For sale
Posted on | June 15, 2006 |
This car has been with me in three different states of Australia but it feels like more than that many lifetimes. I remember my mum driving it to the shearing shed with morning tea when I was still working on the farm for Dad. I remember it sitting in the carport at Suncrest Avenue with mum’s jacket over the headrest, her little almond car snacks and a bottle of water always sitting in the middle bit between the seats. I remember my ex-boyfriend driving it to Sydney with his dad to start a new adventure with me - and my excitement the night he arrived. I remember fighting it out for a park at the end of Brown Street with all the other Newtown share-houses, then later, driving home along Canterbury Road past the Portugese Chicken Shops in Petersham that always smelled to me like burning rubber.
I remember packing it up and driving over the Harbour Bridge the weekend before I left Sydney. It stayed outside Will’s house for a few nights until, as his mum put it, I was ‘really ready’. I wasn’t. I drove for 12 hours with tears streaming down my face, unable to stop in case I didn’t keep going. I made it to my cousin’s house in a new state and then another cousin’s the day after as I began to wonder how everything would be okay. I remember parking it in New Farm for the first time and on the way to the real estate agent bumping in to the only other person I knew in Brisbane. I remember the feeling of safety and happiness and gratitude I would have each time I drove home from the shopping centre with the person I loved and the boot full of yummy groceries. I remember taking it to Byron Bay for Splendour in the Grass the year Franz Ferdinand played and the year after. I remember taking it to Mooloolaba for a tiny road-trip and how much it rained on the way back. More recently, I remember my utter panic when the auto-transmission gave out on the main road and how alone it made me feel.
This car has been with me longer than most things in my life. Putting it up for sale on Trading Post just now, it makes me aware of how very many things don’t get conveyed in “$1700 - ONO”.
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June 15th, 2006 @ 7:50 pm
You could alsway write a story about this, and offer it as an added extra for a few more bucks. Every trading post ad should have to do that. the ‘history’ of the item for sale … cool! - problem is the $ per word bollocks.
July 6th, 2006 @ 11:30 am
[...] To get to my title: when I called some car removalists yesterday, reconciled to the fact that no one will buy a 1990 sedan with two gears, the first guy offered me $100, talking over my attempts to explain what had happened to the car and arrogantly diagnosing that ‘no one else will give you any more than that’. On the second call, the nicer guy patiently explained that if I had alloy wheels then maybe the car would be worth more than $30. When I told him the wheels were old, dusty and rusty, with no hubcaps either, he was still pleasant in tone when I asked him to come get it anyway. I told him just now that I had asked him to come even though he wasn’t going to pay me as much as someone else, because the other person was rude. And even though he was going to offer me more than he quoted on the phone anyway, he gave me the $100 I asked for. He even listened to my boring story about how the car had moved state with me twice and so had all these extra associations, and asked what it was like living in Sydney. I’m sure that financially there might have been a better solution to my car problem (I will get more for cashing in the registration than for the car itself) but the emotion and energy involved was affecting my confidence and concentration. And I actually feel like the process had a happy ending, because the car went to someone who seemed like a nice human being. [...]