Sudha Hamilton

The Curse of the Caravelle

Where to begin? What point in time to choose to tell an awful tale from? Was it begun at the decision to traverse the country to support my sister, whose long time partner had just succumbed to bowel cancer? To attend her expo and represent the magazine, despite the enormous distance and costs involved, well I suppose this is the real moment of departure.

How were we going to get there? My partner, our two kids and their au pair -would we fly? All those airfares to be paid, with a full fare charged even for a three year old – the price of the seat no matter the size of the bottom. Five hours of hell, trapped in a metal tube with two very small children and a docile to sulking nineteen year old nanny? What about seeing the country instead, driving across the length and breadth of Australia – from Sydney to Perth! See the dream, the expanding vision, why yes we will do it. But we need a bigger car.

Not only will we have our luggage, but also stock and magazines for the expo. Let’s camp along the way to save money and really see this wide brown land. So now we will have tents, sleeping bags and associated camping equipment to fit into our vehicle. What vehicle? A cursory search for hire cars reveals a limited range of people movers and larger off road vehicles at extraordinarily high rental rates and without the option of leaving the vehicle in Perth and flying back. We spend hours researching types of vehicles and find most of them still too small, with space for people but not for luggage. We look into trailers and roof racks and the costs mount and mount. My partner strongly intones that she will not be spending that much money on a hire car.

Well shall we buy a van?

“Oh yes,” says she, “I have always wanted to have a van and tour the country!”

So we begin to seek out a van or large vehicle from car yards and internet sites. But time is running out, we have now less than a week to go before we will need to leave if we are to make it across the country in time to get to Perth before the expo starts; and we have to mail out all our magazines to our subscribers and retail outlets when we arrive. A big job just got a whole lot bigger! Such is the chaotic nature of our lives and our crazy decisions to fill our lives with a national magazine, small children and the decision to support extended family.

So we see Land Cruisers, station wagons, vans and people movers but always there is something not quite right – too much money or not enough luggage room. The departure date looms over us like a storm cloud about to break. We find a van we like at a car yard just down the mountain and we test drive this bronze coloured behemoth. The laconic American salesman Kurt sits in the back and speaks German with my excited partner as we rollout of the car yard. It is like driving a bus and my partner has always envisioned herself driving around Oz in a bus. This Volkswagen Caravelle is big and it seats eight, with room underneath the seats for lots of luggage. As the sound of German pervades the interior of the van it seems like it is meant to be. We will buy this big van and embark on our journey.

Car loans, insurance and purchasing are pushed through by the car yard people with alacrity. Soon we are excitedly out on the street actually steering this bus home. We book her in for a quick trip to the local mechanic and then for some new tyres. The mechanic assures us that he could see where they had worked on the automatic transmission and everything looks pretty good for the trip.

With her new tyres on we begin the task of packing the stock, luggage and camping equipment. With three adults and two small children there is an enormous amount of stuff to fit in: three air beds; five sleeping bags; two tents; boxes of toys; a giant sausage shaped bag full of kids clothing; five bags of general luggage; an exercise stepper; computers; printer; boxes of books to sell at the expo; and numerous boxes of magazines squeezed into every nook and cranny. In addition we crammed beneath legs an esky, camping sink and stove, fold away tables and five chairs, and food. We even had a herb garden growing on our dash board. As we chugged away in our bronze chariot, up the Blue Mountains and over and down into Lithgow, we felt that we had all achieved an incredible amount to have pulled away from the dock, so to speak, and begun this journey.

Lina, our Austrian au pair, noticed an exhaust smell coming in her rear window, as we stopped for drive-through coffee in Lithgow. I closed her window and turned on the air conditioning and fretted momentarily about the road worthiness of our new van, mentally checking off possible causes for this. The engine seemed fine and we continued on our great adventure, my partner with map in lap plotting our course through inland NSW. Sitting up high at the wheel of this big van rolling along down the highway, with family safely ensconced in the back, I felt like the captain of a ship setting forth into the great unknown.

The kids were doing great, curled up and around their buxom nanny, and playing endless games. My partner kept checking in with Lina, to see if she was alright and not feeling too smothered by their affections, and we were assured that things were just fine. I kept up a reasonable running commentary or travelogue for the benefit of our foreign visitor and for my darling and the kids, who were new to this neck of the woods. Summer was almost upon us and the red dirt and dust of inland NSW was everywhere to be seen.

To be continued…….