Vanlife is such a funny tag, isn’t it? It seems to have taken the world by storm, and it looks pretty gorgeous and lovely on the outside, doesn’t it? Those camera angles sure make vans look spacious and luxurious. Don’t get me wrong – I love living in vehicles, and have done so all my life. The happiest I’ve been in living in cars, vans, buses and trucks, starting with a trip around Australia on Jeff Kennett’s surf team (@centrelink and #teamaustralia folk might get this reference, if not, ask) in a mid 70’s Toyota Corolla with a single camp mattress, towels for curtains, and snuggled up next to a backpack and my surfboard.
It was no co-incidence, then, that I met the love of my life when he was living in an old mobile library – you can read about this here. I found another picture of the old girl the other day – isn’t she beautiful? When I look at that I think about the romance that went on inside in the haloed honeymoon days of our relationship, with the woodfire tick tick ticking and… well, you don’t need to hear about that. Here's he in the snow, the morning after our third night together. As an Aussie, I was so excited about the snow in England, but he's barely awake and not so impressed here.
Then, we lived in a Bedford horse lorry. Again, I wish I'd taken more photos, but who was to know Steemit was coming? I've popped a link to the story about her below, if you're interested.
You know, I can’t even remember what we did in the back of that one, but I do remember lying in the back of it all the way back from Byron Bay because I’d hurt my S.I joint so badly I couldn’t sit. I ended up driving her into the back of a truck, which was a bummer. It was the way of the universe, though, when my friend was upgrading his VW Transporter and sold his old one to us for a song. We actually couldn’t convert it for years because we had to have a seat in the back for Jarrah – but it was long wheel base, so we could fit a double mattress behind that seat, the esky under Jarrah’s feet and so on – we squished in somehow, and Jarrah was small enough to sleep along the width behind the driver’s seats on a camp mat.
When Jarrah got his licence, we got straight into conversion mode. We’d learnt so much about conversion over the years that there wasn’t a lot of thinking involved, just doing. The most important thing was the insulation and cladding, because condensation is a bitch. We went straight for foilboard and whatever you call that other white fluffy stuff.
Rather than proper ply, when for a plastic backed one which is great as it’s super light-weight and wipe clean. The hardest bit was cutting the templates – we got big sheets of plastic, held them in place and marked them with a sharpie, then used those to trace around the boards and cut them out.
We also lined the floor with foilboard and big sheets of plywood to have a solid base to work with, and we knew that would also make it warmer. We’ve been in some really freezing places in this van and have been far toastier than anyone around us. We found some cheap linoleum – the idea of wooden boards is PRETTY for hashtag vanlife but after years in live-in vehicles we knew it wasn’t practical, and it’s hard to keep clean. Plus, there’s not a lot of floorspace in a van anyway, so why bother spending all that cash on boards or making life hard for ourselves? I’ve never regretted that decision, that’s for sure.
We could then make the frames for the seat and bed situation. We had two objectives really – an easy to put together bed, plus being able to transform it so we could carry long things like surfboards or bits of wood and building stuff for endless projects. This also had the added bonus of being able to reconstruct it so there’s also a table on the inside, which is handy. We’ve had the entire family in there once eating dinner in the rain – that’s my parents, two nephews, my sister and husband and me and Jamie. To be honest we don’t use it that much on our own as I can’t be bothered making the bed again.
The other thing I really wanted was LOTS of storage room for food and everything had to be super easy access. As I’ve explained before my post on the cooking arrangement in the van, it was really important for me to be able to pull over and make a cuppa or a hot lunch without rifling through a lot of crap. In the end, turns out we have two food areas – one in the front near the fridge for most of our food, and the one in the back for cooking equipement plus the things we use regularly like olive oil, spices and srirarcha and so forth.
I won't write a lot about the cooking situation, as I've written about it before (please read the post before, as I totally love our solution!). I will say though that the removable cookbox is sooo good, and I much prefer the kero stove over having to carry around a gas bottle.
Incognito street park, Melbourne party time
If you would like to read or view more about our vehicle obsessions, here are the links:
