Van Life

Now you know how we made the decision to buy a van let me introduce her.

She is an Iveco Daily 2005 model, manual Van.  She has many, many kilometres on her diesel engine. 300,000 in fact.

The internal \build was done only a few years ago by a genius named Peter who initially bought her as a quick money making fit out job with a mate.  Peter and his partner fell in love with her however and the fit out got more bespoke and suited to their requirements. This eventually led to him deciding to keep her and travel in her.  Their longest trip was 14 weeks from the Gold Coast to Tasmania and back. They decided to sell when an off road 4WD trip called them and they had to start with a whole new rig.

First thing of note is that the kitchen area is bigger than the galley on the boat! I have more storage for pots and pans and that type of stuff than on the boat.  The fridge is small, but I am constantly amazed at just how much I can fit into it. There are plenty of drawers and cupboards for first aid stuff and personal items as well as food although I have repurposed the shoe box for extra food storage. Shoes are becoming less and less necessary the further north we go. The galley has an induction one plate stove, but this can only be used when we are plugged into 240 V as it uses too much power for the solar to keep up with.  This leaves us using a single butane stove for the majority of the time.  I am not really keen on this as the canisters are disposable and I feel bad about using such an unsustainable resource. Plus it leaves me cooking with a single hotplate which means evening meals requires a lot of juggling or needs to be one pan or one pan plus BBQ.

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The bed, while it does fold up so you can make a small sitting area hasn’t been used like this by us.  We sit outside and eat as much as possible, and I have bought a little stool to sit on in the middle of cooking and if I can’t be bothered clambering over Rick to get onto the bed.

We can watch TV or the computer from bed too. 

There’s a lot of storage space under the bed and while there are a few spots left to store a bit more we’re not anxious to fill up every tiny space.  There was still room for the Persian picnic rug and a recycled plastic one as well as the kite board and all the paraphernalia that goes with it including a wetsuit and harness.

Also under the bed is the water pump and the water tank and various groundsheets and awning parts.  Beside the bed is where we store our clothes,

The roof originally held a box that now has firewood in it, the solar panels and a large and HEAVY 2-person kayak.  We have replaced the kayak with an inflatable SUP (Stand Up Paddleboard) which we plan to take back to the boat with us when we return.

A few details.  We have solar panels and an inverter so we can charge the laptops.  There is about 50 litres of water storage on board which lasts about a week.

There is a porta loo which slides out for night time use when we are camping in side streets and anywhere there is no public toilet. And the other thing people ask is do we have a shower. The answer to that is that we have a tap on the rear of the van and a shower that we can easily attach to that. It’s cold though and there is no privacy. We have a gas heater for water that we can use but as yet we don’t have a gas bottle so we haven’t tried it. Swims, beach showers, the kindness of friends and the odd camp ground have meant so far we have managed pretty well.

Outside we have a fantastic awning and when we use it we pull out the Persian picnic rug and sometimes the fairy lights.

I know that you think all we do is this…….

Or this……..

But often it looks a bit like this…….

More on where we have been and what we have loved next time.