My first glimpse of what is to become our home whilst living our life on the road came at 10am on the morning that Geoff and I flew down to pick up the bus as we entered the street that the bus was parked in.
Will There Be A Life On The Road?
I was both excited and a little apprehensive about what I was going to find. Was it going to be in as good a condition as the EBay listing and the vendor had told me, or was I about to pick up a bucket of rust that would not even make it to Queensland.I was about to find out.
After finding the vendor and introducing myself we went and had a look at both the inside and outside. The most obvious thing that I noticed was that it needed a full repaint inside and out. Externally there did not appear to be to much rust. Most of it was on the roof rack, which would be easy to repair. Mechanicaly all the tyres were near new, there were no oil patches underneath and everything seamed to run ok when it was started.
Overall I could see that I would have a fair bit of work to do to bring it up to scratch. But it was nothing that I could not take care of as I have worked in both the boat building and caravan manufacturing industries before.
When I had paid for the bus and seen my brother in law off back to Canberra I was thinking great we will be on the road in no time. All I had to do before we could leave was organise insurance and a permit to drive it back to Queensland. How wrong was I there.
Would the Insurance company Let Me Get Our Life On The Road?
The permit was easy to take care of as the motor registry office was just down the road. When I tried to organise insurance for the trip though my insurer (that had said that I could insure the bus with them when I had phoned them the previous week) they said that they do not insure motor homes that big. That left me with a bus that I owned but could not move due to lack of insurance. Our life on the road was starting to look more like life in a car park.
My friend Geoff came to the rescue and gave me the number of his motor home insurer which is affiliated with the Campervan and Motorhome Club of Australia. On calling them I was told that they would be happy to insure the bus but I had to be a member of the club before applying for insurance. No problem (I thought) I will jump on line and sign up straight away. It ended up taking another four to five hours to organise my membership as my application that I had to fax through had to go through with a pile of applications that they had received over the weekend. In the mean time we went and bought some supplies for the trip put some more air in the tyres and replaced the wiper blades on the bus.
It was after 4pm by the time I got my membership number and phoned the insurer with it to organise the insurance. That was done in five minutes thankfully and we were finally ready to depart.
That will have to do for this post. In my next post I will describe my first taste of life on the road as we traveled back to Queensland and the mechanical challenges that we had to overcome.
Cheers,
David Wood
New life on the road
Thanks for this David, I’m subscribing to the RSS feed – can’t wait for the next installment!! You sure have had a few little battles just getting the bus home, I’m sure you won’t even remember these little hiccups in a few months. Great that you have chosen this blogging medium to share the story as you go along. There is bound to be plenty of people who will find this story not only interesting but helpful also.
Hi Bev,
Thanks for your comments. I decided to tell the story of our journey warts and all, to not only keep the story real but to also give some insight to anyone else who decides to take a similar path. The little issues that come up might be slightly frustrating at the time but by focusing on the end goal I always find a solution and move on fairly quickly. Lisa did well getting it for $18,000, The vendor had an offer of $24,000 straight after the auction ended. So I was quiet happy when I saw that it was not a pile of junk. Most of us with the exception of our 16yo are looking forward to getting on the road and shareing our journey with you 🙂
David, I’m looking forward to the journey you and Lisa are about to embark on. Really enjoying your posts. Keep it up and happy to subscribe.
Thanks Tania,
We are looking forward to bringing you more of our New Life On The Road soon:)
Hi David,
I must send a link to your website to my brother in the UK who regularly travels around the UK on holiday in his Winnebago. He always has great tales to tell. How fantastic that you’re going to write about all your adventures. 🙂
Hi Jan,
I hope your brother enjoys reading about our adventures. With a forty year old bus, five boys and all of Australia to cover there will be many stories told by the time we are finished:)
Hi David,
Sounds like an exciting adventure so far. Thanks for sharing it with us. I’m looking forward to the next installment. Have fun as you go.
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wicked blog cheers for posting.
I am enjoying reading about your new life on the road and look forward to hearing more!
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Thanks Kristy,
We look forward to bringing you more of our adventures. 🙂