While we were staying near Warringah Mall, we started looking at renting another car.
The MG hire car we had was easily the worst car we had ever driven. It was uncomfortable, annoying, and somehow made every normal journey feel harder than it needed to be.
When we checked rental prices, the decision became fairly obvious. Another car was going to cost around $2,000 for two weeks, which felt ridiculous.
So we changed plan.
Instead of spending that money on another rental, we bought a car.
We found a red seven-seater Holden Captiva with low mileage for a decent price. It was not glamorous, but I liked it, it was practical. It had space for the girls, bags, shopping, beach stuff, and everything else that seemed to follow us around by then.
The funny part was that we bought it from a French couple who were also travelling around the world.
After all the places we had been, after starting in France, after driving away from France in the snow thinking we might have made a huge mistake, we somehow ended up in Sydney buying our Australia car from French travellers doing their own version of the same mad thing.
Travel has a sense of humour sometimes.
So we bought the Captiva, took the MG rental back, and got a little bit of control back.
It was not glamour.
But it was useful, affordable, ours, and after the MG, that felt like luxury.