If you want to drive a car in West Australia as a tourist or overseas visitor, you can do that the first 12 months with your overseas driver’s license. After 12 months you have to apply for an Australian driver’s license.

If you are from

and you have a permanent address in Western Australia, you can transfer easily your overseas driver’s license into an Australian driver’s license. All other nationalities will need to pass a road rules theory test.

In Austria we applied for an international driving license, so we could provide an English translation of the Austrian driver’s license. But if you plan to stay in Australia for more than a year, you can save the fee of 34 Euro for the international driver’s license and apply for the Australian driver’s license as soon you have an address in WA.

To apply for a WA licence with your overseas licence you need follwing documents:
· your overseas license
· your passport
· a proof of an WA address, e.g. electricity or gas bill
· bank or credit card to have a second proof of your signature

In order to apply for an Australian driver’s license, you will need to attend at a licensing center. There are 9 centers in Perth and 7 around Western Australia. We were at the licensing center near City West in West Perth.

At the center you have to complete an application form and tell them which classes you want to transfer. It is advisable to transfer all classes (i.e. class for cars and motorcycles) at once, because the application fee is the same.
In the application form they ask you for your personal details and if you have any medical conditions. And they ask you how you’re built. I had to ask what they mean with that and they really want to know if you’re fat or thin or whatever term you prefer to describe the fat distribution in your body.

After completing the form, you have to do an eyesight test. You stand in front of the counter and behind on the wall, approx. 1.5 meter away is a sheet of paper with letters on it. Then you have to cover first your left eye and then your right eye and you have to read the line on the bottom of the sheet. The whole procedure doesn’t make much sense, because the piece of paper is so close to you. And in case you’re really that blind, someone can come earlier and tell you the letters on the sheet. The sheets don’t look like someone changes them every day.

After this test your documents get checked and you pay the fees for the driver’s license. The application fee is AUD 41.80, the driver’s license itself costs AUD 33.80 for one year and AUD 107.30 for five years. As you can see that’s different to Austria, because we pay once and get our driver’s license for a lifetime. After that they give you a piece of paper with you details on it as interims driver’s license. Your real driver’s license will come to your home address per mail within a week.

The whole application process was done in less than half an hour. We were really surprised how hassle free it was and how friendly and helpful the people were. And the best thing was that we didn’t have to take the road rules test again! Imagine, if we failed it!

For more infos about the WA driver’s license click here.