I’ve just started booking a long overdue holiday to Europe with my boyfriend, where we’re planning to take our sweet time venturing through every country, exploring every inch to our hearts’ content. We agreed spending anything less than six months over there should be considered a failure.
I fully expect to encounter my share of headaches when booking a huge trip like this, navigating bureaucratic messes both here and abroad. Between sorting out working permits (for if/when we decide to do some bar work along the way), background checks, and the myriad other documentation needed to travel overseas for long periods of time, I thought I had a feel for what we were in for.
But I’d never thought simply driving overseas would entail such a unique bureaucratic nightmare!
Our Australian Driver Licences are recognised as legitimate and standalone permits for driving in and around countries such as the U.S. and the U.K., but they’re not recognised on their own for a whole bunch of countries we are planning to drive within.
Our government advises that we must also apply – and pay – for an international driving permit, because an Australian Driver Licence doesn’t work as an “International Driver Licence” (there’s no such thing). The driving permit supposedly tells authorities overseas that your actual Driver Licence is valid and has not expired (despite the fact that, you know, the Driver Licence has an expiry date printed on it).
The driving permit comes in several languages and is instituted for all of the countries that Australia doesn’t have reciprocity agreements with – and it’s a long list…
Even though we have to buy these driving permits and carry them around with us while driving overseas, we still have to carry our Australian Driver Licences with us anyway – at the same time! Why should I, or anyone else, need to go through a process, paying extra cash I could have used on my holiday, for essentially the same documentation that I already have?
