Hooray for Harry

Week 3:

When we were driving to my brother's house at Mt Greville (near Boonah), Danny saw 2 old Transit vans in a farmhouse yard. He said:

"We'll stop on the way back".

We had a great stay with my bro, his partner, their young and old dogs and our dog.

And then we stopped at Harry's on the way home.

Harry's yard had a few cars, trucks and the transits. He told us there were lots of Transit Vans in Melbourne and this is where these 2 came from.

He sold us some parts to be removed from the 2 vans - a front vent grille and ashtray. It was hard to get away, but we eventually paid him and got his number to arrange for pick up somewhere closer to us. Good onya Harry!

It's always the things you see out of the corner of your eye that shape your destiny...

Demolition, Good Advice and Rust

Week 2: Where do we begin?

We spent a great 1st week having breakfast and meetings in

Keith and having friends drop in for a look.

We dedicided, on advice from our handy man, Poste, to keep from the bathroom forward and gut the rest. So the next day, Danny demolished 75% of the interior (keeping the fridge, stove, sink, knobs & electrical fittings) and we dumped about 1tonne of ply wood at the Reddo tip.

(I do love a visit to the tip, especially the pile of twisted metal bikes, chairs, and misc. metal items)

Then Danny began chipping away at the rust, did lots of revving of the 250 crossflow motor and said on several occasions: "I love this motorhome".

We went to the metal yard looking for parts, and they put us onto Brett's Camper Care down the road in Clontarf. Brett was a good bloke and told us to keep our small 3 way fridge and restore the windows rather than buy new ones. He also gave us a utility door he had lying around.

We'll get him to check over the motor when the time comes.

End of week 2 and we are still v. excited when we open the door and see Keith waiting outside.

Bringing Keith Home

Monday, May 31st: I came to home to half our front garden and fence missing.

I said: "Have you told Bruno we want to buy it?"

Danny said: "Um No. Can you ring him to arrange an internet transfer".

So I did. $2100 and tip-truck delivery on hold for the next day. We don't wanna risk him breaking down on 4 lanes of highway or the Gateway.

Tuesday, June 1: Keith arrives at 11:33am.

Danny gets him going with jumper leads and takes him for a short spin around the block.

And Keith finds his place with the chuck wagon and the camry.

Wednesday June 2: The first of many questions.

What to keep inside?

All of the interi0r, none or some...

The Dream

7 years ago: we were driving back from a road trip to Cairns and thought it would be a cool idea to go on a big trip one day in a campervan or motorhome. I think we even looked at some vehicles on the net, but then the idea lay dormant for a few years...


18 months ago: we were driving back from cousin Keith's funeral in Bundaberg, we thought: we can't keep putting this trip off. So we looked again for vehicles...but still were not that serious. In January, 2010 we decided that we needed to commit to the idea and started searching for a slide-on, campervan, motorhome, caravan or bus. After a couple of months, we finally agreed upon the style of vehicle we wanted.


2 weeks ago: we said "the universe will send us the motorhome we want". A day later, Danny was looking at the Trading Post online. He found a Ford Transit Motorhome - $2750. Needs work or wrecking. Been sitting under a tree at Nerang. So a couple of hours later, were at Bruno's place at Nerang, looking at our future motorhome - Danny, Sammy and Indigo Velvet, our black lab x.




The motorhome was big - 20ft long. The motor worked and it had the sort of gypsy feel we wanted for our adventure. We stayed for about an hour and a half, chatting to Bruno: "It's the labour mate. It'd do up, but it's the labour." He said he'd chuck in a new bedroom window and a couple of lights if we bought it.


We went home very excited.

Should we buy it?