Life on the Road | We bought a Caravan

In our first article of our ‘Living on the Road’ series, we told you about our caravan search in and around Brisbane and how the idea of Living, Renovating and Travelling in a caravan was born. If you didn’t read that one yet, click here to start with that story 😉

Our caravan

Well, we found a caravan. A Hallmark grand deluxe, born in 1987. Just like my brother, 30 years old. And for its 30 years old it didn’t look too bad and would for some people be pretty much ready to move in, as it was totally livable – Apart from the disgusting carpet –

Okay, and the horrible color of the roof, the Ugly brown color inside, and some other cosmetic things. Basically, there was nothing wrong with this caravan, apart from our taste which wasn’t really in line with how it looked like when we bought it.

To be totally honest: The thing was ugly as hell, but we saw the space, and the extra space we could create. And the potential it had to make it better.

The layout of the caravan is perfect, it’s very wide and the setup was perfect as it was, apart from the bedroom, which we could flip. There is lots of storage space, loads of cabinets, great kitchen workspace and a massive annex.

Here are the pictures of how it looked liked when we bought it ⇓

Believe us, you wont recognise it again after the renovation 😉

Bringing the caravan home

Hm, wait, what? The caravan is our home. Well, at least that was the plan. After the renovation. After turning this ugly beast in a cozy, modern and tropical beachy home.

The best place to do this was with our good friends Kelvin, Jessica and Slayde in Mackay. We stayed 10 days with them to renovate the lot and get ourselves set up for our life on the road. We are forever thankful for them to open their home, their harts, their inspiration, and ideas and that they coped with our 2 cars, a caravan and all our crap in their front yard ♥ ↓

As we bought our caravan on the Sunshine Coast ( over 1000 km from Mackay ) we had a little road trip to do first. So we took off, with an empty caravan without any gear, bedding, pots, and pans, or plan where to stay for the night.

We would just take the Bruce Highway, and see where we would end up. Funny thing was that we knew our friends Kim, Nicole and the kids would be somewhere along the way as well ( also without a plan ) and while cruising along the Bruce Highway, we spotted their awesome Orange bus on a beautiful little parking area ( can’t really miss that one with the bright orange colour and a few beautiful painted birds on the side of the bus )

So we caught up with them, had lunch together and we all went our own ways again. Without a plan, hitting the open roads.

We decided to get some groceries and drive a little longer to see if we would find a nice rest area ( free camp ) along the way.

There are many of those rest areas ( free camps ) along the highways in Australia ( Big city areas excluded of course.. )

After a little while, we decided to take the next rest area which happened to be GinGin rest area, located 50 km West of Bundaberg on the Bruce Highway.

GinGin Rest Area is a great stop, with many camping/parking spots, toilets, and a barbecue. We will show you more about GinGin Rest area in another article later.

We only stayed at the GinGin rest area for the night in our empty caravan. Luckily we bought 2 snuggle blankets at Kmart as it was quite chilly that night, so all 3 of us crawled up into the bed with our Kmart blankets, had a good night sleep and hit the road again early the next morning after shooting some amazing photos of the morning fog ( more about that later )

We arrived back in Mackay in the afternoon, got welcomed by Kelvin, Jessica & Slayde with a delicious meal and slept the next 10 nights in their spare room while preparing for our life on the road.

Click here to read our next article about the start of our caravan renovation process.

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