Free Love...Under Different Skies by Nick Spalding Page B

waving his hands around, I can only assume the third test isn’t going all that well.
    “Found one you like there, Laura?” he asks as I climb out.
    “I think so, yes.” I look to Jamie for confirmation, who bobs his head like a nodding dog in an earth tremor.
    “Great stuff! Let’s go do the paperwork with Bushy.”
    The process of buying a car in Australia is not as straightforward as it could be. In the UK you just put your details on the registration document, take your new owner’s slip and other documents, and hand over your cash.
    In Australia you first buy the car from the vendor, and then you have to drive it across town to a garage, where they complete something called a roadworthiness certificate, which is much like an MOT without the hand wringing and casual overcharging. Finally, you drive across to the other side of town to pick up your registration (or, rather inevitably considering we’re in Australia, your “rego”) from the Department of Transport.
    All this takes the best part of a day.
    Yep…a day .
    The Mitsubishi Magna isn’t officially ours until after three in the afternoon.
    “Right, then, that didn’t take too long,” Brett says unbelievably as we walk back out into the glaring afternoon sun from the cool confines of the Department of Transport building.
    “Really?”
    “Oh, yeah, the queues were pretty short. It took me four days to get my Commodore. Still, no worries, eh?”
    “No. Absolutely not.”
    Do these people ever get irritated by anything ?
    “Right, then, I’ve gotta shoot off. Got a football match at five. You guys okay to find your way home?”
    Unfortunately we are. “Yes, thank you, Brett. Jamie’s phone has GPS.”
    “Great! I’ll see you Monday morning.”
    And with that we are left alone once more, this time in charge of a three-litre automobile that’s so large it makes me look like a little girl while I’m driving it.
    It’s on the drive back to Grant and Ellie’s that Jamie comes up with his plan to get us out of there.
    “Look, they’re lovely people and very hospitable, but I don’t think my nerves, lower back, or survival instinct can stand another night,” he says as I follow the digitised female voice back along Wynnum Road.
    “What do you suggest?”
    Jamie looks back at Poppy, who is fast asleep on the backseat. “I think Poppy should develop a hideous fear of koala bears.”
    “What?”
    “We’ll tell them she’s frightened of koala bears, and we can’t stay another night because it might traumatise her for life. All the grunting is keeping her up at night and causing night terrors.”
    “That’s ridiculous.”
    “No it’s not. They are keeping me up at night.”
    “Why don’t we just say it’s your problem, then?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous, I’m a grown man.”
    “Sometimes I wonder.”
    All in all though, it’s not the worst idea in the world. We can leave Poppy in the car while we broach the subject with our hosts when we get back.
    I hate lying to people, especially good, kind folks like Grant and Ellie, but I also hate mosquitoes big enough to play the harmonica, a bed harder than the Orloff diamond, and the kind of heat usually reserved for browning the tops of cupcakes.
    By the time we pull up outside the ramshackle Queenslander, we have our story straight.
    “She’s scared of the koalas?” Ellie says doubtfully from where she sits in her rocking chair out on the veranda. Jamie and I are standing sheepishly in front of both her and Grant as they relax the afternoon away.
    “Yes, deathly afraid of them, unfortunately. It’s the grunting,” Jamie explains.
    “I’ve always found it quite soothing,” Grant offers and takes a sip of what looks like the frog sauce he smeared over Poppy’s head watered down to a drinkable level.
    “We’re really very sorry,” I add. “It’s been lovely staying here, but we do think we should probably go back to the hotel in Brisbane for her sake.”
    I can see your face,