Performing car inspections is an important job, I’ll have you know. The Bureau of Australian Special Inspections for Cars (BASIC) is the only thing that keeps total anarchy from reigning on our streets. I get my assignments via pigeon, which consist of a selection of road that could be anywhere in Australia. I sit by the side of the road for a few days, record everything I can about cars and their habits, speak to a few local mechanics and send off my report, again by pigeon.
This week I’ve been in Mornington. Automotive specialists in this area must be extra vigilant, both because of all the tourists driving hire cars irresponsibly and the concentration of salt in the air. Salt is quite, quite deadly to cars.
When I haven’t been crouched by the side of the road, I’ve been speaking to car servicing professionals, making sure they know that salt is corrosive and that cars need desalination just as much as drought-ridden areas of farmland. They all seem to understand fairly well. In fact, some of them seemed slightly insulted that I asked.
Look, sirs, I’m just doing my job, keeping Australian roads safe. It’s not easy working for BASIC. With so many roads and so few agents, the budget is stretched pretty thin, so I’m having to stay at Big Ben’s British Bed n’ Breakfast. I arrived in the middle of raucous celebrations of ‘International Crumpet Day’, was draped in a necklace made of crumpets by a staff member in a horribly cheap beef eater outfit, and then all the guests were forced out of their rooms so we could dance around in a circle, arms linked and legs kicking while the staff members led us in a rendition of ‘I Vow to Thee My Crumpets’.
So yeah, that’s pretty rough. All so that I can make sure that car servicing and car repairs here in Mornington are being done, and done right. It’s not always easy, being an agent of BASIC…but I do get to tell people I’m an ‘agent’, so that’s fun.
-Basil