Old-Time Camping And Motorhoming In New Zealand...

Those were the days.
Motorhoming and camping in New Zealand
early last century.
It seems just like yesterday...

Mr Sharkey, Doyen Of Our Housetrucking Fraternity Celebrates Forty Years Of Alternative Lifestyling...

One of the best known characters of the worldwide Housetrucking fraternity and a source of all knowledge, especially relating to North American housetrucks and buses, celebrated forty years of alternative lifestyling recently.
Mr Sharkey was reminiscing with me and
I thought I'd share a little of him with you.
Forty years ago on October 10th, 1974, 
I purchased a 1962 Chevrolet C40 moving van from Crest Cabinet shop in Los Angeles, California with the intent of turning it into a dwelling and escaping the hell-hole and human-zoo of that city. 
On the way home, it was barely running, there was a huge Y-shaped crack in the windscreen, and the brakes were mostly for wishful thinking. 
I pulled into a Mobil service station 
to put some gas in it. 
There were two diminutive Japanese men attending the station, and they got quite a lot of merriment from my asking for $1.00 worth of regular grade petrol. They walked around the truck, throwing their arms wide and repeating "One dolla!!! One dolla!!! HAHAHAHA!!!", obviously enjoying the fact that I wasn't going to be getting very far in this big truck 
on a couple of gallons. 
Gas was $0.50 a gallon then.
Here's to the next forty years my friend...

Camping And Caravanning. Images From Way Back When...

Oh yes those were the days some of you old enough to remember will be thinking right now.
These images, the first one has featured here before, come from around 1915 through to the late 1960's and remind us that what we're doing today is nothing new.
They had good ideas way back when too and while most didn't bring their plane with them, such a thing was possible.
They did things with style too in those days and getting away from it all was a lot simpler.
Then there was unemployed shipyard worker David Weatherhead from Sunderland who designed and built his one man caravan he travelled with while he looked for work.
He would have had a job just pulling it...

Maid Of Dreams. The Head Turning Gorgeous 1951 Bedford Gypsy Housetruck And Shining Star Of The 2013 Bedford New Zealand Rally...

Maid of Dreams is a stunningly gorgeous 1951 Bedford Housetruck of the headturning variety.
She was without doubt the star attraction at the 2013 Bedford New Zealand Rally held over Labour Weekend at Lance Cryer's Bedford Heaven near the town of Thames.
Kimbo Davey, now deceased, housetrucker and lovable rogue from way back when, named the housetruck in the late 1980's.
Robbie and Jill Romain have owned this wonderful Gypsy Housetruck for the last twenty years, many of those spent with New Zealand's Gypsy Fair that would work the whole country for up to thirty six weeks a year.
Robbie and Jill managed the fair which in it's heyday had over forty housetrucking families making and selling their wares as they circuited the country presenting possible and affordable dreams to all who thronged to meet the wonderful free living, free spirited, gaily attired gypsies and bohemians.
Those were the days my friends...