Our Touring Past

Hi All, Recently returned from 2 weeks in New Zealand with my wife Judy and our 18 and 20 yo daughters. Had a great time, flew into Christchurch, drove to over the mountains to Greymouth on the west coast then down the coast looking at the glaciers and onwards to Wanaka for Xmas and a flight over the lakes and the general area in a 1938 Tiger Moth biplane (a must do) then down to Dunedin and back up the east coast to fly out of Christchurch. New Zealanders seem to be much more inot camping and caravans than us Aussies with a lot of very attractive older vans coming out for the Xmas holidays. Although I didn't take many photos I did see this homebuilt teardrop being used as a coffeee shop. Don't know how the guy fits inside to work and dispense coffee out the window but the bit of paper says 'Gone Sailing' so couldn't see inside.



The following photos are of a 1948 homebuilt van that is in the Settlers Museum in Dunedin. Stunning workmanship and obviusly a lot of thought put into this one. Rear opening hatch like a teardrop, wood or coal stove, double bed, lots of wood and chrome. Very low to the ground and even sheeted underneath I guess for streamlining. The axle is even recessed into the streamling so that it is totally smooth when you look underneath.

















A greatr trip through lots of interesting country. The temperature ranged from a high of about 30 degrees to a low of 4 degrees at Dunedin.





Spent a while sampling the many beers available..........need to be sociable you know )
Koala

Onya Ken
Thanks for sharing your holiday happy snaps with us.
Looks like you guys had a great time.
Would love to get over there and go deep sea fishing in the Bay of Plenty... they reckon the snapper are as big as whales.

Reddo

Hey Ken.
Great photos of the home built van. It must weigh a fair bit though as I am rebuilding a Glen caravan at the moment and it doesnt have half as much timber framing as this one does, not to mention the coal fired stove. Not hard to guess the owners were from Southern New Zealand, as it can get pritty cold down there.

Cheers.
Richard.

Hi koala400au

Great to see you caught up with the Buick and home built van at the Settlers Museum in Dunedin, it's a great bit of gear. Anyone with an interest in vans should see this one if you are over there. We holidayed there for a month a few years back and I was just getting more of an interest in vans and photographed a couple that took my eye.
The first was a nice little fibreglass van at the markets in Dunedin that had been converted to a food stall. At Richmond a van converted into a motor home caught my eye but couldn’t help but think that first step would be a bother in the dark of night. I wonder where you do carry the steps After we left Milford Sound it snowed the next day, an interesting experience I’d not had before, travelling in snow. We stayed overnight at Wanaka and the next morning headed off to the west coast but ducked in to have a look at Lake Hawea. This van was on a block between a couple of houses and I dare say is used as someone’s ‘bach’. It looked a little unloved and the only other thing on the block was the loo, just visible in the right of the picture. I just thought it was such a ‘postcard’ with the lake and the snow on the mountain and the old van. I’m not a fusherman but I could picture myself set up there looking out over the lake on a warm evening, couple of snags on the barbie and a few coldies! As it turned out though, it was that bloody cold I didn’t even get out of the car to take the photo, just cranked up the telephoto and stayed warm:!:

I don’t remember seeing too many vans, even though we mainly stayed in Top 10 Holiday Parks, plenty of mobile homes though. The gypsy type motor homes conversions from old trucks and buses took my fancy; especially the Bedford ones and I took a few photos which may be of interest for a separate post.

I do notice that the NZers seem to like symmetry in their van shapes looking at these three.

Cheers
George

Hello George.
That last photo is just great, it COULD be used for a postcard. New Zealand must be a very popular place for aussies to holiday at. There have been three people over there that I know of.
I have been looking around the website at caravans and the caravans from New Zealand seem to be very English like to me.

Frank.

Hi vanners

While scratching around on the www the other night I found this site showing a van at the Te Papa Museum in Wellington, check the link if you are interested in 30s NZ homebuilt vans. Only one photo unfortunately

http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/Objec ... oid=626335

if you also look into the Results from DigitalNZ at the bottom right of the page there are pages of all sorts of caravan photos including a brick caravan Only in NZ

George