Young Motorhomers

Sally Rogers
January 2008

As a young girl I had always heard my father speak of his youth. I had always marvelled at his stories of travelling through the outback, working in mines, fishing & hunting. It all seemed so far away from the cold sleepy town of Warrnambool, where our family lived and ran the local newsagency. My father was always a hard worker and the newsagency was a 7 day a week business which left little time for extended holidays, but at sixteen I managed to convince him to relive his trip through the Red Centre that he had previously travelled, back in the early 60s.

After a couple of weeks of planning we packed my father's trusty old Nissan Patrol and set off on our big adventure, just me and dad. Over the next 4 weeks we saw a lot of amazing things, from the vast desert plains of South Australia to Ayers Rock in NT, and all the while meeting interesting people with stories from every corner of our beautiful country. This trip was a huge eye opener for me, seeing all the happy travellers in their motorhomes and caravans enjoying life to the fullest really made an impression on me, and from then on I decided that was the life for me.

From a young age I have always been a creative soul and have always had a passion for jewellery and jewellery making so, with some encouragement from my father (who let me sell bracelets in the newsagents at 7yrs old), I started my own small business at the ripe age of 17. I started selling in our newagency and then expanded over the years to wholesale, to large surf shop chains in Victoria and Queensland, as well as doing local markets and the Port Fairy Folk Festival yearly.

In 2003 while living in Torquay in Victoria I had a chance meeting with a young traveller called Ross, who was living in his Daihatsu Delta van, surfing his way through Victoria at the time. From the moment we met a strong friendship blossomed which grew into a loving relationship. Ross has since joined my business and we both work together making the jewellery and selling it, as well as the many other chores that come with running a small business.

Ross and I were travelling and working through Queensland during the winter of 2004, escaping the cool weather of Victoria that tends to freeze the market trade to almost a standstill, when I received the phone call. It was 3.30am on the 20th of August and my distraught brother Sam was on the other end. My father Tom had suffered a fatal heart attack while he was enjoying a meal and a few drinks with some friends at a local pub in Warrnambool. Words can't explain the pain felt after losing a family member, but I was very lucky to have Ross, my brother Sam and his wife Ischale, as well as other family and friends to help me get through the grief and move on.

The following twelve months was quite a busy time with a lot of cleaning and sorting out of the family home, and all the other formalities that went with his passing. During this time Ross and I decided that we had to make the business more mobile for us to succeed all year round and get our name out there. We decided the best way to do this was to buy a motorhome and set up a workshop of some sort and live in it, following the markets and festivals wherever they may be.

We started doing a lot of research of all the different layouts the motorhome companies had, and what we were going to need, to live comfortably in a motorhome. I had a few priorities that I required, they were: a large shower, a big fridge, as well as plenty of cupboard space inside for my clothes. This wasn't the only thing to factor in as I have an old Blue Heeler and had also inherited my dad's two dogs, a miniature Jack Russell and also a Jack Russell X Red Heeler. My father's dogs were his best mates, and after unsuccessfully trying to find them a home together, Ross and I took them in and included them in our adventure to be.

We never realised how hard it would be to find a motorhome, and it seemed the more we looked into it the more confused we became. To add to the frustration we had a fairly small budget of $60,000 - $70,000 to work with, which may seem like a lot of money to someone who knows nothing about motorhome prices, but in the scheme of things we were looking at the lower end of the market, which meant ex rentals and tired old rigs that had seen more of Australia than the Leyland brothers.

We eventually managed to find our perfect home (after coming extremely close to buying an 18ft Winnebago). We were put onto this website by an old family friend, it was the CMCA Members Marketplace. What luck to have been given this site, because it was here we found our 21ft BMCC built Capricorn cruiser cab over, which is powered by a Ford Trader 3.5L turbo diesel with only 118,000 log booked kilometres.

The motorhome was in the Hinterland of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, but as luck would have it Ross's parents lived about two hours away and were willing to go have a look, take some photos and look it over for us. Cutting a long story short, two days later we had purchased the motorhome without even personally viewing the vehicle.

After picking up our new home in August '05 at Ross's parents place in Hervey Bay, work began immediately on modifying the inside to suit our needs. It began with knocking the top bunk bed out and raising the bottom bunk to bench height, making our work area and also the dogs' bed under the bench. This also helped open the dining area up to let more light into the work area (which is a must when making jewellery). Once we had the inside sorted we then had to fi nd a vehicle that we were going to tow, as we needed transport to and from markets, as well as everywhere else we wanted to go that our 21ft home couldn't go. This led us to a trusty little 1982 970cc Suzuki Sierra that was nice and light and also very economical. We had been looking at a lot of different towing systems and we ended up choosing an A-frame as our best option both in cost and ease.

We were now finally ready to set off on our adventure, well almost. We just had 3 days of packing ahead of us. This was not all that easy, as we had a lot of stuff to take and not a great deal of place to store it all! Needless to say there were a few disagreements about what was to make the final boarding call. In the end we were really surprised at just how much we could fit inside.

So off we headed on our fi rst adventure, it was a three month loosely planned trip from Queensland to Victoria, where we had our fi rst large festival for the summer - the Queenscliff Music Festival. It didn't take us long to realize that having the dogs with us was going to be more of a challenge than we had anticipated. After purchasing our bible "Holidaying with Dogs" we were shocked to fi nd out how few caravan parks there are that allow dogs. Undeterred we began doing a lot of research into fi nding parks that were close to markets of interest for us, and then going from there. Although this tended to limit us in some ways in the major cities, it helped open our eyes to a lot of wonderful places with small markets that are scattered along coastal towns through New South Wales and Victoria.

After arriving safely in Victoria we decided to divide our time between Phillip Island and down near my old home in Port Fairy, as well as staying at my brother's place in Melbourne, when the need arose. We worked at many markets throughout the summer including the St Kilda night markets on Thursday nights, and the Port Fairy Folk Festival (which I have been doing for eleven years) in March. From Victoria we headed to Canberra for Easter, where we had a stall at the National Folk Festival, which is an amazing spectacle to be a part of. From Canberra we ventured to a beautiful little town called St Albans, which has the best old pub and folk festival, with an amazing vibe about it.

The next leg of our travels was to be the furthest that either Ross or I had travelled, it was to the city of Darwin in the Northern Territory. Ross and I had applied for a stall at the Mindil Beach Sunset Markets twelve months prior and were very lucky to be chosen to showcase our designs there for the dry season. Due to Cyclone Monica brushing awfully close to Darwin, the first market which was due to begin on Thursday 4th of May was cancelled, which gave us a bit of time to visit Ross's parents in Hervey Bay on the way through. We then headed north to Rockhampton, across to Mt Isa and via Three Ways up to Darwin, all in all about a five day's solid mission.

We had organized to stay at an FPA park that was dog friendly called Coollalinga Caravan Park. The managers of the park, Kim and Mark, were extremely helpful sorting us out with a permanent site including an ensuite, so close to the season beginning. We have been in the park close to three months now and are still enjoying it as if it was our first week. The Mindil Market we are involved with is the most vibrant market with a huge variety of food and craft stalls, and local musicians all silhouetted by the tropical sunset. We have found a special place in our hearts for the Territory since arriving here, and we are definitely going to be following the migration north for the winter months in the future.

I have to say thanks to all the wonderful people, young and old, for all their kind words of encouragement to get out there and travel Australia while we are young, and also all the helpful hints we have been given for living on the road.