http://openroad.com.au/going_for_broker.asp

My car broker gave me my life back.

I wanted to buy a used car, but I didn’t want to spend my weekends (and my weekly fuel budget) trawling car yards and dodging the tricks up salespeople’s sleeves. As a result, I was developing an unhealthy and anti-social addiction to motoring websites.

Then a trusted friend told me about Steve Johnson, an urban legend – well, a legend in my country town anyway. He was a car broker who, for a fee of $500, promised to find me the kind of car I was looking for in my price range and guarantee it mechanically sound. If not, he’d send it back to the dealer-only auctions with no obligation on my part to cough up any cash.

Steve was a car-buying superhero: a licensed motor dealer and experienced car broker rolled into one. He didn’t have the overheads of running a car lot and outsourced his own team of mechanics to give the car a good going over when we found it. Visiting dealer-only auctions and wholesalers four days a week, with a list of eight to 15 cars to buy at any one time, he was a finely tuned tracking device with an eye for a good buy.

My recovery was quick, as Steve called from the auctions each day after sorting the wheat from the chaff. The process worked smoothly, particularly as I had a definite idea what I was looking for, which narrowed Steve’s search down. I wanted a five-door hatchback with a curvaceous body in a light colour, small and fuel efficient, but roomy enough to fit my son’s gear in the back, with low kilometres, air-conditioning and a driver’s airbag. Importantly, I’d researched the Used Car Safety Ratings on mynrma.com.au and found most cars in the light and small cars category were considered worse or significantly worse than average, so my car had to score at least average or better. And I wanted it all for $6000.

In other words, I wanted champagne on a beer budget. Achieving that kind of small miracle is where a broker can really come in handy. The Department of Fair Trading defines a car broker as a ‘motor dealer consultant’ – essentially, a spotter who can tell you where to find the best deal without actually getting involved in the sale (unless they are also licensed dealers).

Brokers know the tactics dealers use to close a favourable deal, and can leverage their up-to-date knowledge on market values to cut out the haggling. They not only find you the best price – whether at a dealership, privately or at auction – they also do all the legwork, saving you time and money.

Brokers can accompany you to auctions and guide you towards the best deals. James McCall, CEO of the NSW Motor Traders’ Association says: “Anybody who buys a car at auction and is not an expert is very foolish. You really don’t know anything about the vehicle when you’re bidding on it unless you’ve got some incredible expertise. Don’t go unless you’ve got an expert acting on your behalf. Something like 160,000 written-off vehicles are auctioned across Australia every year. They’re often repaired by backyard repairers, and frequently those repairs are done badly.”

While McCall cautions against braving auctions alone, he says consumers should be wary of brokers who promise to save them a lot of money when buying from dealers. “A broker is not going to do any better than you can do for yourself. If you walk into the first dealership and have no idea of what to buy and just pick a car, you shouldn’t be allowed out during daylight hours.”

Steve Johnson says he does get better deals, as he buys vehicles on behalf of clients at a true wholesale price at dealer-only auctions. Operators like Steve are a small sector of the market; you’ll find the best ones through personal recommendation, but you can also find reputable (and not so reputable) brokers who offer similar services in newspaper classifieds sections or on the internet.

In the first week, the best contenders Steve found at auction were a 2000 Hyundai Accent with 140,000km, 1999 Volkswagen Polo with 130,000km, and a Hyundai Elantra with 150,000km, all around $6,000. I briefly dabbled in my addiction again as I compared online prices for similar models. Steve’s suggestions seemed like great deals.

We finally hit the jackpot with a champagne-coloured 1997 Holden Astra TS City, which had been lovingly cared for by one elderly couple all its life – no, really! The service history was meticulously completed in the logbook, which Steve had scrutinised, and the stereo was even tuned to the easy listening radio stations. It was slightly older than the others, but had only 60,000km on the clock and was immaculate (I was assured the speedo hadn’t been wound back). It scored ‘average’ on the Used Car Safety Ratings, which I could cope with. Steve bid on the car at auction using his own money and won the bid at $6,100 – most comparable models I found on motoring websites were priced at $7,000 to $9,000 and had twice as many kilometres on the clock.

Steve gave me a statutory warranty of one month, a guarantee of clear title and a safety certificate, and organised the transfer of registration papers. As he was a licensed dealer, I also had a 24-hour cooling off period. Seeing the car in the flesh for the first time, as I was about to pay for it, was a little unnerving, but it was in almost perfect condition and was exactly as Steve had described.

My only complaint was that he encouraged me to buy a three-year warranty for $400. In the excitement of the moment, I made the mistake of not scrutinising the warranty carefully and have since found it lacking in some areas. However, I’m glad to say my story has a happy ending. The car is going great a month down the track, and I’m completely cured of my internet addiction – in fact, I never want to see another car sales website again!

Chai Tent jam, Maleny Folk Festival, 1991

The Chai Tent is about so much more than the chai. Through its various incarnations over the past two decades at the Maleny and Woodford Folk Festivals in Queensland, Australia, the Chai Tent has really been about bringing people together. It’s a meeting place for like minds and hearts. A communal loungeroom. A chillout space for people of all ages and persuasions. A safe place to crash after dancing for hours, or have a pash on New Year’s Eve. A musical incubator. A shelter from festival storms. A haven.

A grassroots, Maleny-born success story, the Chai Tent celebrated its 21st birthday at the 2008/09 Woodford Folk Festival. Due to an error in calculations, the crew  thought they were celebrating their 20th birthday, until someone pointed out they did two festivals in their first year, 1989, so they were actually 21! Oh well, they can’t count but they can make a kick-ass cup of chai, and on a busy festival day they might serve as many as 3000 cups.

Some say the Chai Tent helped put Maleny on the map. It has grown from a small bamboo structure that held about 50 people, to a huge pavillion holding more than 500. Its early alternative crowd has diversified to encompass the mainstream, just as chai itself has found its way into Australian café culture in the form of the chai latte.

“Nobody knew what chai was back then,” says local facilitator, writer and Maple Street Co-op member Robin Clayfield from Crystal Waters. Robin started the first Chai Tent with then partner Skye at the National Folk Festival held in Maleny during Easter 1989. Skye and fellow Crystal Waters resident Karin Erkin thought it would be a good idea to sell cake and chai at the festival, so Karin’s partner Hans, and Robin, jumped on board the chai train.

My   understanding is that it was pretty much the first chai tent in the country,”  says Robin. “Skye got his chai recipe from Chai Mick in Melbourne, who was the first person to bring chai into Australia; he sold it at St Andrews markets in Melbourne and at the first Confest.

Skye of Skye Chai fame, Maleny Festival, 1991

“We built the whole Chai Tent out of bamboo,” says Robin. “Hans, Skye and I cut down bamboo for days and then built a fairly simple rectangular structure with a gable roof that a truck tarp fitted over.”

The Chai Tent’s momentum built quickly and others joined the core crew, including Crystal Waters residents Phil Smith, Annie Wall and Nigel Parratt, (who are still part of the core group with Robin); as well as Philippa Church, who now lives in northern NSW, and Maleny musician Steve McLeish.

“The second year I remember being absolutely amazed at having a couple of guys from the band Sirocco jamming and playing with other musicians in the Chai Tent,” says Robin.

And so the legend of the Chai Tent’s all-night jams began. “Something that was very special about the Chai Tent was that because the Maleny Festival was a residential festival, a lot of the performers camped and stayed on site. Because we had an ambience of creativity, some of the musicians started jamming there. We put instruments around to encourage it and it started to take off. The collaboration through jamming of really exquisite musicians was stunning.

“By the third or fourth year there were huge jam sessions with hundreds of people, with Linsey Pollack and Greg Sheehan leading it. Linsey would lead the wind and brass instruments and Greg would lead the drumming. There was a big circle in the middle and people would go in and dance or do movement – it went for hours. It was just amazing, there were even people up in trees looking down.”

Linsey Pollack and Greg Sheehan leading a chai tent jam.

The Chai Tent crew have always been innovators, particularly with their construction methods.
“If you wandered around Woodford this year there were a lot of straw bales and bamboo, and we introduced those to the festival,” says Robin. “We also introduced microjet sprinkler systems to keep everything cool. I like to think of the Chai Tent as a permaculture chai tent. We’re involved in design from a commonsense perspective, which is what permaculture is about.”

The crew’s creative ideas have come with an element of risk. By the time the festival moved to Woodford in 1994, the Chai Tent had expanded to a tunnel-like venue made of polypipe hoops, bamboo and a tarp. Robin recalls how the whole structure nearly came down in a storm: “I remember coming back to the Chai Tent [from elsewhere in the festival] with a storm fully raging. I was looking at these two hoop structures and the apex above it and in the top roof the whole tent was billowing down with water and pushing on the canvas, and starting to weigh it down and deform the shape of the structure. The others were in underneath it; they didn’t know the water was there. A jam of a couple of hundred people was happening underneath it. It took ten people half an hour to push the water out without drowning anyone – and the jam kept happening! It was just mad. In the aftermath of that we realised how dangerous that was. It could have killed people.”

The time had come to go plastic. It was a difficult decision, but the crew decided it would be safer and easier to ditch the handmade tent and hire the pavilion that remains its home today. Colourful decorations, low tables and hessian bag seating still give it that friendly Chai Tent vibe.

Like any group of people working together over a long period of time, tensions do arise within the core group, so how do they deal with conflict?

“We’ve all done a certain amount of personal growth stuff and I think that’s aided us a lot over the years,” says core group member Phil Smith. “Considering the kind of stress we’ve been in and the kind of pressures we’ve put ourselves under, we’ve actually come through really well and still offer a unique service.”

Nevertheless, there have been years when they’ve seriously wanted to throw in the tea towel. So what keeps them going?

“For me it’s a change of lifestyle for a month of the year,” says Phil. “It’s reminiscent of my younger hippy years, which I’m proud of. There are times I wonder if we’re all raving lunatics to continue doing it – the stress levels can be high.”

“If we were just in it for money we wouldn’t be doing it,” says Robin. “Its not a really lucrative business. The things that have kept me going are being in service and having a really good strong ethic. Why it works is that we create a big loungeroom for people and a safe space for people to meet, relax, party, play music. We encourage trading by operating on the LETS system and even though these days we have a stage programmed partly by the festival, we have chalkboards so people who aren’t necessarily programmed can still have a space to play music.

“I think the thing that has kept us going was a love of being part of the festival. The heart is still there within the festival.”

“We don’t seek to just sell things and then hope that people leave,” says Phil Smith. “People feel comfortable to come and stay as long as they want, which isn’t necessarily good for business.

“For me the whole festival thing is about bringing people together in community, sharing with each other and leaving the festival on the high of being around fellow beings. I used to leave festivals with a sense of positivity about the future and humanity’s role on the planet, and I think when it comes to my future involvement with festivals I’d actually like to go more in that direction, be more involved with festivals principally about wellbeing.”

“We’ve had so many comments that the Chai Tent is the heart of the festival, it’s the pulse that keeps the festival going, a thread going through time; people have called us an institution,” says Robin.

“Many people over the years have said they wouldn’t go to the festival if the Chai Tent wasn’t there,” says Phil. “It’s a place where they can linger, where they can come and just be.”

A generation of children have grown up with the Chai Tent – some who were put to sleep amongst its hay bales as babies are now adults. Robin hopes the core group’s own kids will inherit the Chai Tent in about ten years’ time and continue the tradition. But for the time being, the crew are in recovery mode, taking stock before another Woodford rolls around and it’s time to put the water on the boil once again.

From Maple Street Co-op News: http://www.maplestreetco-op.com.au

I traveled to Sydney where I interviewed business entrepreneur Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. Enjoy!

A Place For All Seasons PDF

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