Bye Bye Hercules, we will miss you heaps!

On the way to Margaret River we stopped for a few days in Perth to prepare Hercules for sale. Herc had driven us from Darwin to Perth, over 8,000 KM (5,000 miles) without a bath. He was SO dirty!!! It took us over three hours to get all of the red outback dust and dirt off of him.

In addition to posting an online ad for sale, we printed out flyers and posted inside all of the hostels in town. While we drove from Darwin to Perth, there were bound to be heaps of other backpackers wanting to make the reverse drive.

We received five calls inquiring about the Jeep for sale. The first interested were two Italian guys who fell in love with Hercules straight away. They had some mechanical questions we could not answer and we suggested they take the Jeep to a mechanic for an inspection before committing to buy.  They did not think this was necessary and instead wanted to negotiate price. We agreed on a price and they paid us a $500 deposit. The agreement was that Stacy and I would drive Hercules to Margaret River and back and the boys would pay us the rest of the money when we returned to Perth in three days. We were relieved to have sold the car so quickly and and surprised when the boys insisted that we let them prepare us authentic Italian pasta with grandma’s secret meatball recipe.

We knew that there was going to be a problem when we received a text from them a few days later saying they did now want to take to a mechanic. When we met back up with them in Perth they informed us they had just purchased another Jeep! I informed them they would not be getting back their deposit as we already told the other people the car was sold and now we would have to race around last minute and try to sell before Stacy had to catch her flight home two days later.

We drove all over Perth putting up new for sale signs. Lucky for us there were still people interested in the Jeep and we were able to sell Hercules the next day to three very  nice Belgian Backpackers.

I was happy to have some alone time with Hercules before we had to say goodbye. Stacy decided to stay in a hostel her last few nights in Perth, but I preferred to sleep in the Jeep as it was free and I knew I didn’t have much time left with Hercules. Our last few nights spent together were in a liquor store parking lot and parallel parked on a downtown street.

While we know we left Hercules in good hands, it was still very sad to say goodbye.