Our Touring Past

I hope it's appropriate to start a new thread to cover items relating to Aussie caravans in the 1920s rather than posting them in other sections and getting them disconnected.

From what I've seen in my general digging about so far Australia was fairly slow in taking up the caravan as we know it. They appear to have moved from the 'horse drawn caravan' to the 'motor caravan' that was based on a lorry or car chassis readily enough and lots of body builders offered conversions although few photos of them seem to have made it into the various press of the day. 'Trailer caravans' as today's caravan was often referred were slower to appear and when they did they were mainly home built and primitive compared to their British cousins of the day from what I can see. Given our ability in Australia to take up new technology today and in the past it seems odd that the caravan seemed to lag behind until the late 1930s, especially given our acceptance of the motor car across the county.

This first article from The Mail (Adelaide) on 20-10-1923 (Trove) seems to cover all the points and indicates that caravans that were quite sophisticated with their facilities and caravan parks were already well established in England and America. The final paragraph I've highlighted and seems to indicate that no one in Australia (or specifically South Australia) had taken up the caravan at this time. I've not researched prior to this year so in due course it will be interesting to see if anybody had a caravan of some form that was reported elsewhere. This next item from Trove is from The Mail (Adelaide) 14-1-1928 and shows what seems to be a typical offering of the 1920s, a collapsible type camper caravan, this one is particularly novel in that the roof could be removed and used as a fishing skiff, amazing stuff. Finally for the moment this item from The Argus (Melbourne) 6-11-1928 describes a more sophisticated style van being used but it's not quite clear if it is actually the one in the photo or an English van, I suspect the latter but it certainly highlights the differences in what was used when compared to the previous item. The final bit of the text seems to be missing unfortunately.

George

These two items appeared in newspapers in 1930 but I guess it is fair to assume the vans were likely built at the end of the 20s, especially the first at it was published in January 1930. Its not clear if this is a local photograph or from overseas but the number plate looks English as does the body style on the Triumph Super Seven. There was no further article with the photo which is from the Western Mail (Perth) 23-1-1930.

The second photo is from the Sunday Times (Perth) 31-8-1930 and is a locally built caravan, very much in the style of the previous one. It has the door at the rear and is very basic but no doubt did the job. George