18 Feb 2021

On my morning dog walk, I smugly passed by a car featuring number plates from one of our regional areas – CGG. Of course, I knew instantly where those people were from, because knowing regional license plates has been a hobby of mine for a while. I even have a web page saved on my phone, where I can do an instant check if I see a regional plate I can’t immediately identify (obviously I’d only ‘immediately check’ on my phone if I wasn’t the driver, in case you are concerned).

Now the reason I know where CGG is from is because I have relatives living in that area, although interestingly I don’t think they actually have regional plates on their cars. Well – I find it interesting. You don’t need to if you don’t want to.

Anyway – further on in my walk I passed the COW regional plate, which is, quite frankly, one of my favourites. I suspect I’d live in Cowaramup just for the license plates alone.

West Australian regional number plates are fun to work out. Eucla takes all the fun out of it, with their regional plates saying “EUCLA”. But it used to be a badge of honour knowing that IR means they’re from Dongara (Irwin, to be precise), and that WA means Manjimup (Warren) whereas AW is West Arthur.

Nowadays there are lots and lots of different types of plates to work out. Not only do the Shire Council/Districts have plates, there are also different plates for Road Districts/Towns, but there are also Organisation and Charity plates as well. Then there are the personalised plates which always make for interesting car conversations. My husband will frequently ask me what the person means by their car license plate, as if I’m the source of all knowledge in the world. Well, obviously that’s true, but sometimes I like to leave people guessing.

Our one and only attempt at a personalised number plate was our surname, and we gave up those plates after a few years of having a lot of people saying “yes we saw you on the freeway”, or “I noticed you at the burger drive through”, and so on. We had no privacy anymore. You certainly couldn’t look up regional number plates on your phone while driving, because someone you know would see you and blab.

There are some fun personalised license plates around. Online I found one on a hearse that said “U R NEXT”, and a very fancy sports car, with a license plate saying “NOKIDS”. Speaking of sports cars, I like the one with the plates that read “WAS.HIS” 🙂

I’ll finish today with a quiz and a question. Question first – have you seen any cool personalised license plates?

And your quiz, for West Australians or those with a good knowledge of West Australian towns, is… Where am I from?? (No cheating and using my web page that I sourced them from!!)

1. DN

2. GO

3. MM

4. PGP

5. PS

6. TA

7. WOO

8. BU

9. CB

10. JP

11. KD

12. MD

13. MY

14. PL

15. SB