Well, whaddyaknow - Ethel, aka my 75 Bay, is a cover star, as is the lovely wife! I wrote a piece for the book Campervan Crazy for nothing other than the privilege of being featured inside and getting myself a free copy of said book. Yep, I think they got a good deal, all things considered, but owning a vdub was never about the money (well, maybe spending money on keeping it running!). It turns out, though, that not only are we featured inside, my bus and Manda (leaning out the window wearing a pink hoody with cute animal ears on) are going to appear on the front cover. Ahem, exhibit A:

And here’s the original pic, as taken while on our travels across the Nullarbor Plain:

You can order the book now at Amazon (UK) now.

This is another little piece that I’ve written for a ’sidebar’ for a forthcoming book. It’s in its raw format, and will be heavily edited, but here’s how it’s looking right now.

One of the best things about owning and driving a VW camper van (or a ‘Kombi’ as the Aussies generally refer to them, regardless of the layout or origins) in Australia is that you really feel that they are being put to good use. Although caravan parks are mostly frequented by people driving newer and (usually) better-equipped camper vans, the Kombi seems to be ever-present. The old bus really earns its keep and certainly gets a reputation of being a good old workhorse. I forget how many times I heard people say "Those old vans just keep going and going" out there. The good climate helps keep them road-worthy and, thankfully, the price of petrol in Aus is nowhere near as high as in Europe, making those long inter-city journeys affordable as well as enjoyable.

There are differences between owning a Kombi in the UK and Aus, I’ve found. In the UK, you really have to make an effort to keep it road-worthy. When people don’t bother, the vehicles rust. And as vehicles rust, so the good ones become worth more, and it’s because of this that they are much more expensive in the UK (it’s also why so many people look to import from Aus and other places, just like I did!). The end results, I’ve found, is that over in Aus people treat the Kombi as a practical vehicle, and not necessarily as a fashion item. You can park it up pretty much anywhere and not worry that someone’s going to damage your van - they’re everywhere in Aus. It does make for a quite relaxing time. And that pretty much sums up my experience of travelling in the Kombi around Aus - the back of the van was great place to chill after a day’s sightseeing or driving. Well, if chill is the right word when you have 40% heat and no air-con!

I loved our little van, despite its imperfections. The set-up was hardly perfect - we did not have a rock-and-roll bed, and so because the bed was a fixed area it meant that when one of us slept (and by one of us I mean my partner, Manda), the other one had a small area to sit in. The cooler doubled up as a seat for those ‘drinking cold bottles of VB while the other half gently snoozed’ nights, while the driver and passenger seats up front became the general dumping ground for anything we didn’t need overnight. And while the van wasn’t as neatly organised as ‘proper’ camper conversions, we soon had the routine of setting up for the night and leaving the next day down to a fine art; we didn’t trip up over each other, and we never left a camp site so late that we incurred late charges!

Some of the most magical times in our trip round Australia were linked to that van. For example, making our way to Cradle Mountain in Tasmania as the snow started to fall, quickly turning into something of a blizzard. By the time we arrived at a campsite our toes were freezing and we couldn’t wait to get plugged into the mains to get the electric fan heater going. It was all quite spectacular, though, and I’ll always remember the curious pademelon (a type of wallaby) sticking his little head in the van and nibbling the raisins that we left on the side for him.

I also remember one of the scariest moments that happened in Tasmania . We had driven up a slightly steep gravely road and saw a sign that said ‘Private Road - No parking/turning’. I realised that we were coming to the end of the road and slowed somewhat. I stopped, wondering where we could go, and decided that I had to carry on and turn as it was a single track road and turn where I could. Except that I couldn’t move. Gravity was working against me, conspiring with the gravel. There was no moving forwards, so I faced the prospect of reversing, very slowly. I let off the handbrake and gingerly crept backwards. Immediately I felt nervous and put the brake on to think the plan over once more, but while the wheels had stopped turning, the gravel was slipping underneath. In short, I was heading down a steep hill on gravel with ineffectual breaks while facing the wrong way. I had to make a difficult decision, and I *chose* to steer into a ditch to stop it rolling, and then had to do this all over again, but to get back on the road again, I had to swing the front round and effectively steer the front wheel in to the ditch in order to angle the back one out. It was pretty hairy stuff, I can tell you!

I dare say that if we had bought a newer vehicle to travel around Aus, we would have spent less on repairs (electrical problems early on in the trip caused us problems) but I’m sure that it would not have been quite as much fun. And, for that matter, we probably not have a VW van now (given that I fell in love with the van and decided to keep it and ship it home!).

I don’t normally re-publish emails that I receive, but I kinda liked this
one - a very similar story to our own. This is what owning a van is all about,
folks:

Whilst looking for some information on VW Kombis today I stumbled across
your website (thanks to google). I can only say that the story of your
van has struck a big chord with me.

My girlfriend and I spent almost a year travelling around Australia during
2000/2001 in our 1976 VW Kombi. It was a 2.0i hard top that we purchased
just outside of Freo for a little under $3000 and despite the fact she didn’t
have a pop-top (and much alike your Kombi had a custom made (wooden) interior)
she came with everything you could need to be on the road for a good few months.
A good friend of mine who I met at a hostel in Freo not long after I landed
suggested that the best thing I could do was buy a van and see the real Australia
at my own pace….. The deal was finally sealed when we found a VW Kombi
called Molly… With my name being Max and my girlfriends being Holly
we took it as fate that this was the van for us….

Having been living in Subiaco in Perth for almost three months we relished
the chance of getting on the road and having clocked up over 16,000 kms and
had many, many adventures we finally ended up in Cairns. To cut a long story
short we ended up penniless (having suffered some major mechanical problems
caused by a dodgy mechanic in Darwin we spent most of our money just getting
to the east coast…) and after a great deal of soul searching and a lot
of tears we had to wave good-bye to Molly. During the seven months we owned
her she bought us great amounts of happiness and every now and then the odd
moment of despair…. I had often given thought to what it would take
to get her home to the U.K and we spent many, many hours discussing what it
would take to get it done. Ultimately it never got the chance to happen but
I often wonder if we really would have got round to doing it… Anyway
all I can hope that she is still out there, her wheels are still turning and
she is giving as much pleasure to other would be hippies/backpapckers as she
did us….

Having now been back in the UK for over five years I am finally giving in
to temptation and having recently started a job with a company car I have
a little more spare cash and a space on my driveway… Tonight we’re
off to look at Kombi again…

I’ve written an article for a certain VW magazine. Whether it gets published or not, who knows, but they seemed keen. Anyway, here’s what I wrote:

When we first started telling people that we were going to take a year out of our careers, and that a large chunk of that time was going to be spent in Australia touring around, inevitably the question we’d get asked was: "So, are you going to get yourself one of those old campers then?" The answer was always pretty non-committal: "Well, we’ll get something. We’re not sure what, but we’ll work it out when we get there."

Somehow, the prospect of driving around Australia in a Kombi seemed like a cliché. I almost didn’t want to live up to that cliché, and besides, the prospect of driving an air-cooled vehicle in a hot climate like Australia’s seemed somewhat crazy. In my heart of hearts, I really only wanted something that went, wouldn’t cost the earth and would be easy enough to sell at the end of our travels (we had heard some horror stories of people not being able to sell their travelling vehicles and almost giving them away just to catch their next flight).

We spent a couple of weeks in Cairns, in the far north of Queensland, trying to track down a van. Every time one came up, it was sold before we had the time to look it over, or I took too long deciding whether it was a good old runner or a breakdown waiting to happen. So many characterless Mitsubishi L300s and Toyota Hiaces passed under our noses, we wondered if we’d ever leave Cairns. And then I saw an interesting advert.

"1975 Kombi, fresh interior, pop-top, tasty mag wheels"

Well, words to that effect. I gave the owner a call and he brought the van over that same evening. Immediately, Manda and I had that ‘good feeling’ about the van. It’s not wise to inspect a vehicle in the dark (or under streetlights), but our first once-over was very encouraging. There was no interior, but we could sort that out. The main thing was that the van looked as solid as hell, had a good paint job and seemed to run well. The next day we’d decided this was the vehicle for us. We made an offer of AU $2200 (about £880 at the time of writing) which was accepted. The van was ours, but it would still take almost a week to find someone to fit out a basic storage/bedding unit, get the van roadworthy and get a valid rego (Aussie car tax) for it.

Before not too long, the van had taken us down the east coast of Australia, up into the Tablelands around the waterfalls circuit, over to Magnetic Island, through Brisbane and on to Sydney. The van earned a nickname (as they inevitably do), so from here on in I’ll refer to the van as a she, going by the name of Ethel. She may be young compared to many other VWs out there, but to me she was an old lady and needed an old lady name!

In Sydney we had to say our farewells for 6 weeks as we jetted off to New Zealand. She sat, dejected no doubt, in Sydney Airport’s car park for the duration. Meanwhile, I was committing adultery (so to speak) with a very well equipped rental camper van from Tui Campers in Christchurch on the Southern Island. It had a sink, a gas cooker that doubled up as a heater in extreme cold (although you didn’t hear that from us, OK?!), plenty of storage and it was adaptable – a bed that converted to two rows of seating with a decent table. Oh heck, while I’m at it, there was power steering and a heater. We were being spoiled! When we came back to Sydney, perhaps somewhat inevitably she didn’t want to start. It must have been a protest of some kind. The strange thing is that even though she wasn’t as well set up as our rental van, I was pleased to see her again, warts and all.

Our journeys continued around Australia – we made tracks to Canberra and then on to Melbourne. Ethel had a boat trip too, making the choppy route across the Bass Strait to the ‘Apple Isle’ Tasmania. It felt like a small version of New Zealand, so perhaps it was a way of making up to the old girl for leaving her behind before. Back on the mainland again, we continued on to Adelaide (home of Sopru, the conversion that Ethel sports) and other towns along the way before the final big push across the Nullarbor. For those who don’t know, the Nullarbor Plain gets its name from the (pigeon) Latin "Nullus Arbor", meaning no trees. It’s a very featureless area that was once the seabed and includes the longest straight stretch of road in Australia – 90 miles without a single deviation. Oh, and it’s a good 2,500 kilometres until you get to the next ‘major’ town, Norseman. So, it’s a long journey, and Ethel did us proud,

After 8 months on the road (including our NZ jaunt), it was time to say farewell to Ethel. We did the usual thing of flyering the various backpackers around Perth, but had few people calling up. Perhaps we were asking a little too much? In Australia, Kombis don’t sell for anywhere near the price that they do in the UK. I had advertised the van on the Internet, too, and one day we got a phone call from a lady who wanted to import the van. That got me thinking – someone who’s not seen the van is thinking of importing it, paying the asking price and paying the import duties and VAT? Maybe there’s something in this, I thought.

So, we got the wheels in motion to get the van shipped back home to the UK. We were leaving Australia for Thailand at the end of August and were not due to return to the UK until December. What we ended up doing was putting the van into storage for 12 weeks and then getting it shipped from Fremantle, WA to Southampton. One week after we returned home from travels, Ethel arrived back in the UK too. The plan was almost complete, only HM Customs & Excise and the DVLA to deal with (not that I’m trying to trivialise that aspect – it was hellish, but I don’t want to bore people with the fine details of that here!). Finally, there was our surprise – we hadn’t told anybody about our plan to ship the van back home, so it was great fun to reveal our 4-months-in-the-making secret to my family (all Kombi lovers) on New Years Eve.

Now, we’re getting settled in again in the UK and finding all manner of jobs that need doing on the van. She’s a rust-free Aussie battler, for sure, but she’s not show car material. She won’t win any prizes for now, unless there’s one for ‘Biggest Holiday Souvenir’. For now, I’m happy to get her acclimatised to the UK weather and cover up any little areas of stone chipped bare metal, lest the rust creeps in. Manda and I are both looking forward to taking Ethel to some shows and letting her be part of the British VW gang. If you see us, come on over and say g’day!