Hurstville: high-rise, trains and Forest Road
The weekend car
Hurstville is a major station on the T4 line. If you train to work and only drive at weekends, know that RACV says trips under 20 minutes don't give the alternator time to recharge the battery, and suggests a drive of at least 20 minutes every week.
Forest Road and the two centres
Forest Road is the main shopping street, and two big shopping centres sit close by. Short runs to the shops and back are the trips that leave a battery a little lower each time.
Apartment car parks
If your car lives under one of the residential towers, it can go a long time between drives. A car that sits for weeks is the one most likely to greet you with a click and nothing else on a Monday morning, and tyres slowly lose pressure while it waits.
Check the licence
NSW licenses motor vehicle repairers, and Verify NSW lets you check a mechanic's licence. It takes a minute, and it's worth doing before you hand over the keys.
Batteries, tyres and pink slips
NRMA says a typical battery lasts three to five years, and recommends testing it once or twice a year after about three. If yours is past that and the car mostly sits, ask for a battery test at the next service. A slow, laboured start is the usual early warning.
Tyre pressures are something you can check yourself, on a cold car, against the tyre placard (often on the driver's door pillar) or the owner's manual. Once the car is more than 5 years old it also needs a pink slip from an AIS station each year; pink slips in Sydney explains how they work.
Our take
For a car that mostly sits in a Hurstville car park, we'd have the battery tested at each service, check the tyre pressures once a month, and take it for a proper drive each weekend rather than just to the shops. If it does go flat, car battery help in Sydney is the next stop.