KD Trip Down Under: Monday Jan. 7 to Saturday Jan. 12

I'm going to condense the next six days of our trip into one blog entry. We had one important task ahead of us before our January 13th departure for New Zealand, sell the LC, and besides a few good meals, a trip to the beach on one of the hottest days in Sydney's history, and watching a little TV and reading the New Zealand Lonely Planet guide, that's what has occupied most of our time.

We left the Royal National Park campground for the last time and drove into a suburb of Sydney, where we had reserved an apartment in a beautiful old house for the remainder of our time in Oz.

Two brothers built this house in 1880. The current owners live in the
left side. There are six apartments on the right.

Our apartment has a nice little kitchen ...

... and a spacious bedroom. Note the stacks of National Geographics. Lots
of good reading material.

The view out our kitchen door.

The gated parking area afforded a shady spot for me to work on the car, patching up the exhaust, deep cleaning and waxing every square inch of the exterior, thoroughly cleaning up the engine compartment, which occupied several hours over a couple day period.
We had put the car on a website called Gumtree, which is similar to Craigslist on January 3rd, but hadn't gotten any email replies or phone calls. We lowered the price a bit every day, but still got no bites. It began to get a bit worrisome when we got to Wednesday without anyone asking about the car. Only four days left before our departure!
We probably had started out too high. We had paid $5000 for the car back in September, but with the registration, new tires, two new batteries, the roof top basket, and a couple repairs we'd put another $2800 into it. Of course we really didn't expect to recoup all that, in fact I had initially budgeted $7000 for total costs for the car, certainly a whole lot less than renting a 4WD for four months would have been, so by my reckoning as long as we got at least $800 we'd be right on our target. But comparing our car with others for sale, we knew we had a great vehicle. And if we didn't have tickets for New Zealand burning holes in our pockets, we could have waited until we got a better price. We could have changed our tickets and stayed another week trying to get a better price, but that would probably cost us another $1000, and besides, we really want to get to New Zealand to meet up with the kids and continue our Down Under adventure.
When we finally got down to $5400 we started getting calls. Wednesday evening a young German guy texted us, and we set up an appointment for him and his friend to take a look at the car Thursday morning. Then a while later a young Italian guy also texted. We started getting a little hopeful, although we were still thinking about alternative plans.
The German guys showed up the next morning. They looked over the car, took it for a test drive, and seemed pretty impressed. They left us saying they would get back with us later after they got a chance to talk it over.
Diana had talked to another guy the evening before who lived nearby who seemed interested, but he never got the address where we're staying. She tried calling his number to tell him where we were, but couldn't get through to a real person. However, another guy called and asked if he could stop by and take a look in the afternoon.
At around 4 we got a call and a bloke named Terry said he was outside by the LC. I walked out to meet him. Turns out he's a cousin of the Italian guy. He's a 'sparky', or electrician, was born in Australia, and is helping is cuz Guanluca or 'John' buy the car. John is in Oz to learn English, then do some farm work and traveling. When he finishes his trip Terry will get the car to pull a fishing boat.
I opened the hood, and Terry, talking the whole time, did a complete inspection of the engine compartment and the underside of the car. Within a few minutes he'd done an extremely thorough evaluation. I was very impressed. Turns out, Terry has rebuilt and raced cars, used to own a Landcruiser, and obviously knew a lot about mechanical things. He diagnosed an issue with the front right ball joint, which on a four wheel drive vehicle can be a real problem. I had noticed grease leaking from the joint months before, and the tire on the wheel did wear a bit on the inside tread. But I hadn't worried about it. The car had certainly driven well in two and four wheel drive, and for the duration of the trip I didn't think too much about it.
But now it reared up as a huge complication. He obviously wanted to buy the car, having missed out on another opportunity a couple days earlier, but he kept saying things like it would cost thousands of dollars to get it fixed, and he couldn't send his cousin off around Australia with it like that. I figured he'd low ball us with an offer thousands lower than we wanted.
And it's not like we could fall back on the German guys. They had texted us and said they wanted the car but would first like to have a mechanic check it out. They had been concerned to find out how much it would be to get the AC working (we never use it in the US, and didn't even try it out on the LC until a few weeks ago. It didn't work, but we figured it just needed to be recharged). Now they would be paying a mechanic, who would probably figure out the ball joint was bad, and they would certainly walk away from the deal, and I wouldn't blame them. In fact, we were planning to tell them what Terry had discovered, to save them the time and money.
So ugh, we both got sinking feelings in our stomachs. Here it was, three days before our flight, we've got this awesome vehicle with a major repair needed, what were we going to do?
But Terry kept talking. I could tell he liked the car. Even after taking a test ride and complaining about how stiff the clutch was, (I think it feels great), how soft the brakes were (I never noticed it, in fact I think they work fine), and how he dislikes the typical sound of the Landcruiser motor, I could tell he wanted it. He started saying he had friends who were good mechanics, he could probably get reconditioned parts fairly inexpensively, and overall the car seemed in good shape. Finally, he said, he'd call his mechanic friend to get an idea how much the repairs would be and get back with us the next day, but that he probably wouldn't want to go higher than $4800. But he also said, if someone offered to buy the car, to let him know first.
$4800! I could barely suppress a smile. Here was a guy who knew more about car mechanics than I, who had found issues with the LC that I'd never noticed, and who had seemed to do everything possible to devalue the car, and here he was suggesting a price only $600 below what we were asking. In fact, Diana and I had disagreed about our starting price anyways, with me wanting to list it at $5000. So yeah, I started feeling a bit optimistic.
Terry called the next day and said he was ready to indeed offer $4800. Diana said she wanted to talk to me first, and we discussed coming back at $4900, but we agreed that the extra $100 wasn't that important, that we were just happy to get a big chunk of our vehicle investment back and be able to leave the country when we had planned. Diana called him back and said we had a deal. He said John would be by the next day to give us a $500 deposit.
So to cut to the chase, this afternoon Terry and John met us a the train station in Arncliffe, we got our money and they got their car, and they drove us back up to our apartment.

Do I have to give you the key?

Guanluca, Kevin and Terry,

I'm going to miss this car. It's gotten us through 12000 miles of Australia in four months; through city and country, jungle and desert, over asphalt, gravel and sand, through streams, up and down super steep hills and over roads that didn't deviate from a straight line for 50 miles.. We've driven in 115 F sun when it felt like you were in an oven and during dark rainy nights when the roads were covered with wallabies. It carried all our stuff, even when the kids came and we had six to transport. It didn't get the best mileage, but repairs were at a minimum. And darn it, driving that car through the Outback just felt right! It's big, tough, and a blast to drive, and I always felt confident that it would take us where we wanted to go.
No, I didn't shed a tear when I watched the cousins driving the LC away. But it will always be an inseparable part of our trip through Australia.
Indulge my sentimentality. Here are a few of my favorite photos of the LC: