The Today show host Sarah Abo had her heart set on a Volkswagen Golf as her first car, but when she turned up to an Altona car yard with her father in 2004 aged 18, they settled on a second-hand 1999 Mitsubishi Mirage hatchback in navy blue with black rubber bumpers.
It was hardly her dream car; a manual with no air-con or power steering. She’d drive it from her family home in Greensborough to get to Monash University, Clayton, where she was studying an Arts degree with a Major in Journalism and French.
“I was really obsessed with VW Golfs, but it was out of our price range. I lusted after the Golf for years, but never got one in the end. I think Dad was so fed up with me trying to angle towards getting one, he bought the Mirage to shut me up,” Abo says.
“We kept looking at all these different cars for weeks on end. We never landed on one. So ultimately it was Dad's decision to get the Mirage, and I had to suffer the consequences of my indecision, because then I was stuck with a car that had no power steering and no air conditioning!"
Instead of getting her licence the moment she turned 18, Abo was commuting to her classes using public transport. That was incentive enough to get behind the wheel to make her life easier as a student.
“I was catching three buses and a train for the first six months of university for a while. It was hard going, and once I got my licence it saved me a lot of time."
The Mitsubishi Mirage cost about $5000 – a two-door hatchback that required back seat passengers to slide in behind the front seats. It was a tight squeeze to say the least, but the car got Abo and her mates to and from parties and down to the Mornington Peninsula for hot summer days. There was an occasion she and her mates stripped down to their bathers because it was so hot inside the car.
“I didn’t cope well without the air conditioning, particularly in the summer,” she says.
“I’d drive around with both windows down; it was hell! Then I got my first retail job at Chadstone – a long hike to drive from Greensborough; I was clearly a sucker for punishment. The car had a CD-player which kept me happy – at the time it was songs by The Spice Girls, Destiny’s Child and The Killers and some Aussie pub rock on there.”
When Abo’s family arrived in Australia in 1990, they moved into their first home in Reservoir. A year later, her dad purchased a Datsun 200B, nicknamed "The Magic Car". Her dad paid $1200 for it, but got nothing back when he traded it for a Ford Falcon Station Wagon a year later.
“This is a photo of me standing on our veranda with my sisters. I am the eldest with the bowl cut. Seeing that Datsun 200B brings back so many memories,” says Abo.
“We called it The Magic Car because it would never start, and whenever it did, it was as if by magic. I remember on cold mornings it would frost over.
“I have this lasting memory of my mum fighting with the key in the ignition just to get it started. It felt like she was begging for it to start on a daily basis. And when she did get it going it was like a celebration, because we could finally bundle ourselves into this tiny little car as a family of five and off we’d go.”
Sarah Abo will host Vision Australia’s Carols by Candlelight with David Campbell at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl on Wednesday, 24 December at 8pm.
Jane Rocca is a Melbourne journalist and author who writes for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald’s Sunday Life Magazine, columnist The Dish at Good Food, Harper’s Bazaar Australia, ABC Arts. She has written four books and hosted a podcast series Some of My Best Work with Mushroom.
