Where do I start?
A good mate of mine has an Jayco Expanda, so when I had this idea of this trip, initially this was what I thought about, a nice compact 17’ – easy! We went for a trip out to western Sydney and had a look at them. One look and Justine was pretty adamant that she wasn’t going to sleep in what she called a tent. Thinking about it, we are touring, not camping, so it probably was not a great idea. So pretty quickly we realised we were looking at a full sized Van. We then entered the period that I think most couples looking at caravanning go through, she wanting all the internal room, he not wanting to tow a barge. So Justine was keen on the 22’, I just looked at it and said, “I’m not towing that!”.
Even the larger vans didn’t have a lot of space in them, with a big island queen bed up one end and seating area. For the 100’s of layouts they all start looking pretty similar after a while. I guess you should be spending your time outside, but with the motorhome trips we’ve done of NZ we know that sometimes you need to be inside. The motorhomes we’ve hired had a nifty double bed that came down from the ceiling on rails, it seemed sensible to me that if we could make the main bed pack away we could double up on that use of space. As it turned out the dropdown mechanism is both expensive and heavy, so we worked on the idea of a murphy or wall bed, I mean most ultra-small apartments would have one so why not a van?
So do any manufactures have a van model with a murphy bed. Um no. Not one that we could tell. Mmmm.
I started to search for van manufactures that claimed to do custom builds, had a decent reputation and appeared to be make vans within the budget that I wanted. After some research we found about 5 companies that fitted the bill. I was really surprised that the idea of a foldaway bed was just such a foreign concept, you would think these guys were in the business of maximising small spaces. They all suggested we could have a dining table that would convert into a bed, how 1970’s, but they could not get their head around a wall bed. Anyway we ended up short listing two that could do it for the budget we had and in the timeframe we wanted. A quick trip down to Melbourne, (who knew about 90% of Australia’s caravan manufacturing is in or around Campbellfield, Melbourne) to visit the two factories. In the end we choose Wonderland RV to build the van.
I won’t say the process was completely painless, and there were some communication issues during the build, but we got there.
In the end we have a 18’06” (5.6m) van with double bunks, the lower bunk converts into a table and seats for the kids to sit at if needed. Large kitchen, and our fold up bed that leaves a large seating area when up. I would say we have more room than those 22’ we looked in at the start. All that and it’s all kitted out for off road and off-grid use.
The bed, I think it was worth it in the end. For 18′ we have heaps of room.
Oh, and we’ve spend a lot more that the original budget too.