Carnet de Passage

9 February 2012 – To go through countries with your own car, you need a “Carnet de Passage en Douane” which is kinda like a passport for the car. So, first step is to get the form from the AAA (Australian Automobile Association), get a membership from the RACV (Royal Autombile Club of Victoria) or any other Automobile Club, then calculate…and then it gets complicated. But, with some help and a bit of twisting the truth, I got there 🙂

So, with the list of the countries I go to, the most risky is Iran, which is worth a whopping 470%. Great. So calculation goes as this :
Value of the car : 17500 (when I bought it, I just showed the proof of purchase from 2008, that’s excluding all the transformations, hehe)
Value of the spares parts : I just said I had none, so zero.
Total : 17500AUD
Percentage of riskiest country : 470% = 17500 x 470% = 82250AUD
Insurance = 2% = 82250 x 2% = 1645AUD
Carnet fee = 400AUD
Bond = 250AUD
Total = 2295AUD.

This carnet, worth two grand, will list all the countries I go to. The person at AAA, Peppina, was super helpful, and since the carnet is valid for twelve months, she offered to delay its release to the latest possible, when I’m in Darwin in June, and even to mail it to the local office in Darwin. Now THAT’s service !

Sweet 🙂
So this was the last official thing I had to do before I can finally get the hell out of here !