End of an Era – We Farewell our Caravan
After three months wait, our caravan insurer decided to write off our caravan and pay us the sum insured. A bittersweet decision for us. Nancy has been part of our lives for most of our relationship, and an important part of many adventures. (This is a long post.)
We bought our caravan in 2004. White, with burgundy and chrome Holden ‘Special’ trim. We are small car people. Initially we towed her with a Daihatsu Applause. Frank the car towed Nancy the caravan. I remember 2004 because our first two camping events with Nancy were both in Ballarat – John and Cate’s wedding, and the Eureka Rebellion (1854) 150th Anniversary Festival in Ballarat in December 2004. It rained at both events, but Nancy kept us dry and warm. Highlights of the Festival included Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masakela.
A major issue when towing with small cars is the maximum down-weight on the towball. Frank was allowed 90 kg only. (Our VW Golf is rated for 75kg.) Most Aussie caravans anticipate towing behind large cars and have towball weights much greater than that. Nancy was like that when we bought her. To reduce her towball weight, I detached the caravan from its chassis and remounted it approximately 30cm further back. That change achieved exactly what was needed, though we always needed to load it carefully and check the towball weight before driving. The change required new wheel-arches, which I fabricated from aluminium.
Around that time, my parents decided to part with Delilah, a slide-on camper built for Dad’s brother Ron in the 1980s mounted on a Holden one-tonner truck (named Sampson). Delilah the camper had not been kept waterproof. As a result, it was wrecked. However, it had many parts which remained quite usable, and which I repurposed to modernise Nancy. These included the door (with screen door), two windows, the fridge, stove/oven and sink. These were all better than what came with Nancy. Her windows were very difficult to open, with separate fly screens that needed to be moved to access window controls. We even used some of the bright orange vinyl from Delilah and a table-cloth that suited our colour preferences.
I installed the door and windows from Delilah. I also embraced an Uncle Ron safety feature. Delilah had had a window under the table for viewing through the cab rear window. Paired with a window at the rear, this allowed for central rear vision from the cab using the central rear vision mirror. What a great idea! I decided to do the same. For a front window, I used a Toyota Hiace sliding window retrieved from the Downing bus when it was wrecked. Rear vision through the caravan worked well.
As well as shifting the caravan on its chassis and changing the door and windows, I largely rebuilt the interior, installing Delilah’s kitchen and building drawers around the new wheel arches. I painted the caravan bright yellow.
For much of our time with Nancy, our stuffed toys (‘our kids’) came camping with us. Young children always enjoyed meeting them. ‘Our kids’ typically rode on the caravan bed and looked out the front window as we drove.
Keeping the front window waterproof was a nightmare. I eventually realised that a sliding side window is not designed for 110 km/h winds that it gets as a front window. I siliconed the two glass panels in. While an improvement, even as a non-opening window periodic leaks continued.
Most of our caravan use was for weekend festivals, or during the Summer for a week or so camping on the Murray near Echuca with Kathy and Mina and their mob of friends. As such, even if things did get a little damp, it wasn’t a major concern.
In April 2005, we attended our first National Folk Festival (NFF) in Canberra. Nancy attended with us, and every subsequent National Folk Festival until 2025.
In 2006, we flew to Europe for a 7-week holiday visiting family and friends in six countries. Dad always makes great birthday cards. In 2006, Nancy featured in it.
In 2007, we replaced the grey canvas with orange – a much better fit with our colour scheme.
In 2012, I remade our camping chairs to match. For some reason, camping chairs are typically only available in blues, greens, and browns – none of which suited us.
In 2013, we attended Yackandandah Folk Festival with the Zamponistas. Nancy had a blowout on the way. The tyres had worn unevenly because the axle had bent. The original wheels were Mini Minor wheels, welded onto a water-pipe as an axle. The axle was not strong enough and had bent. So we replaced the axle and wheels with proper trailer wheels, which I painted orange.
I often volunteer at festivals. Typically, this involves working for a few hours each day in exchange for a free ticket. In addition to the free ticket, I enjoy the feeling of being part of making the festival happen. At most festivals I worked at venues, checking wristbands on entry.
At the National Folk Festival (The Nash) in 2014, I volunteered with the Community Arts Team – a part of the festival I hadn’t previously engaged with. I learned the craft of paper-lantern-making. I loved it. Typically at The Nash, lantern-making climaxes with a lantern parade on the Sunday evening. On Monday, after the parade, lantern-making is not popular. I spent that Easter Monday making a paper lantern model of our caravan.
I was a beginner. While I quickly grasped the craft of fabricating a shape, I had yet to learn about lantern details like leaving the windows white for the light to shine through. (Adding windows after colouring does not allow light to come through.) Nevertheless, it looked pretty good next to the real thing when I brought it back to camp.
That caravan lantern, tarted-up somewhat, was carried in lantern parades at The Nash for several years.
Nancy had had a few repairs along the way and was looking a bit patchy. In 2016, I repainted the whole caravan again, this time extending the orange theme from the canvas and wheels – I painted the aluminium windows to match, and the trim in the kitchen area.
In 2019, while driving home from Turramurra Folk Music Camp, Nancy’s front window broke. This had also happened once before, in 2007, when Antigone drove to The Nash in Canberra on Easter Thursday without me because I had to work. I flew up on the Friday morning. Coming from home separately, I was able to bring with me another of the Downing bus side windows from home, and replace the broken window on Easter Friday while at the festival.
This time, I was able to do an effective roadside repair for the drive home.
After replacing the window a second time in 2019, I researched how to prevent future broken windows. I learned of two strategies – a stone-guard over the window, and a stone-guard like a trampoline between the car and the trailer. I implemented both! And we had no more broken windows.
Despite all my waterproofing efforts when installing the new window, somehow water continued to get in.
Antigone had a stroke in August 2021 which affected her memory and executive function. She was also very anxious, although less so when caravaning. For therapy, we travelled much more frequently during the summer of 2021-22, taking Nancy on trips most weekends. Due to covid-19, Antigone’s choir, Shaking the Tree, was meeting via Zoom, so she could attend from anywhere.
Antigone is a member of the Zamponistas, Australia’s premiere roving Bolivian pan-pipe band. She has also been singing with Shaking the Tree choir since 2000. In 2022, we attended CresFest and Yackandandah Folk Festivals performing with the Zamponistas, and the Nash performing with Shaking the Tree.
We’ve had a few mini 3D versions – a butter dish, a towbar shin-protector, as well as the paper lantern. Our friend Alana got to know the butter dish first. When we got Nancy out from the garage, Alana referred to it as a giant butter dish, and continues to do so.
In 2-dimensional art, Nancy features on our side fence, on Antigone’s favourite folding chair, on Dad’s 2006 birthday card, just before our trip to Europe, and on a CD cover – music by our friend Tom Bolton.
Several more small strokes each added to Antigone’s level of cognitive disability. She needed extra care, so I retired from work in late 2022 to become her full-time carer.
No longer constrained by four weeks annual leave, we decided on some extended travel during 2023, to our favourite destination, Broome WA (about 5000 km by road from Melbourne.)
This was to be the biggest trip ever undertaken with Nancy. We upgraded her in preparation: new solar panels and battery (Thanks Steve Cumming for your assistance), new 12V compression fridge, insulation in the pantry (previously the only unlined portion of the caravan) – rather important for food storage when heading to the tropics.
Also, on an extended tour, leaks around the window were no longer tolerable. I got advice from caravan manufacturers about waterproofing the front window. One advised that front windows frequently leak and a good solution is to build caravans without front windows. Car windscreens don’t typically have leak problems, so I rebuilt the front of the caravan using a single pane glued on with no window frame – installed how windscreens are. No more leakage!
In 2023, the Zamponistas had festival gigs on four successive weekends, sandwiched between the annual weekend away with Shaking the Tree and Turramurra Folk Music Camp. That made 6 weekends in a row. Nancy missed the first of these weekends due to her renovations. She attended the others.
It was a hectic time – transitioning from home mode to travel mode back and forth every week, especially ensuring all the items needed for Antigone’s care were where support workers could find them. We decided that in future successive weekend festivals would work better for us as a tour rather than travelling back and forth from home.
I was so busy with Nancy’s renovations and trip preparation, I almost forgot about Antigone’s birthday. Her sister Kathy made sure it wasn’t forgotten and we had a great birthday / sendoff party at Moroccan Soup Bar prior to leaving on our tour to Broome.
We left mid-May with a Broome Caravan Park booking for mid-June. (That was our only booking.) We were overloaded, which makes driving uncomfortable as well as dangerous.
We made it to Adelaide, but Antigone missed Peppa too much. So we returned to Melbourne and trained her to be a travelling caravan cat.
Returning to Melbourne also gave us an opportunity to leave behind my unnecessary things – my bike and my weights for strength training. With less stuff, packing was easier and travel more comfortable.
We returned to Melbourne in late October. Rather than unpack, we stayed at home for a couple of days then headed off again for Maldon Folk Festival.
During our 5-month tour Nancy had many Bobifications and improvements, such as Starlink, handrails, security screens, connection for mains water, and new table and colourful awning floor. The jockey wheel was the only part which wore out.
Three months later, our luck changed. I got quite a surprise when I saw Nancy’s underside in the rear-view mirror rather than her front window. The drawbar had broken.
I repaired it by inserting internal steel sleeves int the broken chassis, which I welded in place. Thank you Con Komodromos for teaching me to weld. Two weeks later we were at Turramurra Folk Music Camp, followed by the 2024 Zamponistas Festival Tour – to Yackandandah, Canberra and CresFest, along with a family history stop in Rutherglen.
We had a couple of weekends at Mina Komodromos’s farm at Womboota – seeing it, then farewelling it, when Mina decided to move to Thailand.
Our friend Ying, who we’d met in Broome, joined us as a support worker for our 2025 festival tour, which included a day at CresFest, Yackandandah with Zamponistas, Canberra with Shaking the Tree choir and Turramurra Music Camp.
We had a cycling weekend at Molesworth with Hamish McCracken.
Music weekends with support worker Catherine Zeevaaarder at Rosewood Music Camp and Maldon Folk Festival. A longer handrail was installed, and a new poster – better aligned with Nancy’s colour scheme.
This year (2026), Nancy didn’t make it to the Nash. Read the full story in the 2026 Festival Tour blog posts.
The National Folk Festival celebrated 60 years, and it chose to feature our caravan in the program – on the cover and two pictures inside. The pictures also show our other cute things – our tandem bike and our cat Peppa.
23 years we’ve shared with Nancy. Being celebrated so prominently in the NFF program is a rather lovely tribute as we bid her farewell. We look forward to adventures in our replacement caravan.
