FROM BULLDUST TO BITUMEN

What a wonderful country Australia, our island home, really is. I can think of no better way of discovering it than by hitching your ‘house’ on to your vehicle and heading off. Caravanning has come a long way from the first timber-framed bond-wood vans and so have the people who owned them, not so many years ago, people who lived in vans were looked down upon as second-class citizens.

Many Australians are more familiar with the beaches of Bali or Fiji or the relics and buildings to be found in the UK or Europe, than with the greater part of their own country. Is it the size, the isolation or the perception that our country is flat, arid, empty and desolate? Nothing could be further from the truth. Three-quarters the size of all Europe, four-fifths the size of the United States of America, Australia has everything to offer. We have beaches as good as the best in the world, snowfields the size of Switzerland, mountains, canyons, tropical jungles and deserts. It is a country of great contrasts in climate, landscape and terrain. Travelling around Australia is really like taking a world tour in the one magnificent country, with much of it free for us to explore as we wish.

Our travels began with a caravan honeymoon in 1954 and since then, as the title of this book states, we have been fortunate enough to travel many thousands of kilometres over roads from bulldust to bitumen. Not only have we travelled many thousands of kilometres, camping and caravanning, but during the years from 1954 to 2000, we also leased and operated caravan parks at Boort in Victoria and at Wittenoom in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

We have sold and repaired caravans and on one occasion, built a 30-foot fifth-wheeler from the ground up, including the chassis. We’ll hear more about that though, as our story unfolds.