Our Touring Past

1956 article on some prize winning NSW amateur built caravans.

Not to be out done, some amateur built vans from Victoria.

1956 plan for a DIY caravan.

A 1949 home build article from Modern Motor. George

Here's an quite stylish home built van, article from Australian Modern Motor Manual, Sept., 1950.
George

I really could not let this very unusual vintage caravan go by without adding it to the home built section of the Library.
It was recently advertised for sale on Gumtree at Wanbi in South Australia.

With the sellers comments as follows.

1950's era home made mini orb caravan. Needs a lot of work but great for a restoration project to bring it back to it's former glory..

Now in retirement, my brother has been scanning his slide collection and sent me these two photos of an old home built van that was on his two acre block when he bought it years ago. The photos were taken in 1983 showing it in a sad state, and it was subsequently broken up and burnt. The only thing of any interest kept from it was an early Dymwood jockey wheel, but even it has succumbed to time with internal rust causing it to break apart. Apparently the van provided accommodation for the previous owner of the block for many years, and there was nothing else but the van on the block, apart from trees. It had been built on an old Buick car chassis and utilised wooden spoke artillery style wheels.

George

Some ingenious person has resurrected an old VW combi and turned it into a caravan of sorts. It would actually come up nice with a fair bit of work, as the back and side have a nice shape to it.

On a trip back from the Hunter yesterday we made a comfort stop near the Hawkesbury Bridge and found a small caravan stopped too. Speaking to the gent it turns out to be what is thought to be a 1950s home built caravan. It had been re clad at some stage and the interior has been renovated but not altered. He mentioned the company who made the stove had gone out of business in the late 1950s from his research. I took a couple of quick photos and went on my way, not even looking too closely at the stove. When I later looked at the photo the badge looked familiar, and while I couldn't read it entirely I shuffled off to my little trophy cabinet to find why I recognised it. I have an oval version from the same company removed from an industrial vacuum cleaner. I just liked the badge, the item was tip bound.
The van's interior I thought was really clever, it is a tiny van with single beds on each side which extend almost to the door. There is a table which folds out from a cupboard between them and the clever bit is the last 1/3 or so of the bed platform folds down and the split cushion forms a back rest, so you have a bit of floor space to dress and somewhere to sit. It is a single skin so the Al must be just over the top of the ply, really just the ticket for the sort of thing I need for my '37 Vauxhall to tow. I'm sure the tow vehicle it is used with is a bit of overkill!

George

Its not very often that you can come across a DIY plan for a caravan and then actually find a caravan that was built from the plan.
Well this is certainly not the case with the Monolite 15 caravan here. The plan was sold by Culberts build a caravan plan service and was covered in an article in a 1973 edition of Modern Motor magazine.

And low and behold an actual Monolite 15 caravan popped up for sale in January of this year. the van was owned by Rob Kane and from memory was originally built by his parents.