The Adventures of Stubby

The “second half” of my adventures began in style with a trip on the new double decker A380 plane courtesy of Singapore Airlines to Sydney. The plane was so gigantic that it didn’t even bear thinking how it might get off the ground so I immersed myself in the library entertainment system catching up on some good old British classics that passed the night journey.
We arrived at 6am having not had much sleep and encountered our first obstacle when hauled up at customs for our dodgy looking spice collection that was summarily confiscated but met Rich’s uncle without any problems and were soon catching up on sleep in their house in Kensington.
As we were homeless, jobless and penniless upon arrival the first couple of weeks in Sydney were spent putting in the elbow grease to find flats, jobs and a campervan to begin the first leg of our travels around the country.
In spite of this we managed to explore the city taking in the typical tourist attractions of the Opera House, Darling Harbour (which was far too smart to accept my traveller scruff attire in the evenings), Coogee and Bondi beaches (where the water was colder than Hythe beachfront), National Gallery (attending a brilliant Tibetan film exhibition), Cathedral, shopping malls, The Great British Sweet Shop, casino and theatre to see the hilarious ‘Priscilla: Queen of the Desert ‘ musical which was an ominous introduction to driving across Australia!
In between we managed to suss out a few potential areas to live and fired our CVs to every prospective channel but the main emphasis of our efforts was directed to finding a campervan as we had reversed our decision to work before travelling owing to the disinclination to drive across 40 degree Australia in a can over the height of summer. This required strict monitoring of gumtree and the skulky lower basement Kings Cross Car Market where shabby travellers returning from months in the outback were desperate to flog their clapped out vans at extortionate prices. After much searching we found a beautiful specimen called Daisy who had just carried a family around the east coast and so was in much better condition than the backpacker equivalents and came equipped with every luxury you could need. Making a gentelman’s deal with the Kiwi owner we thought we could relax until we got the money to him but in the interim his mother-in-law fell down a bus, cracked her hip and then suffered severe complications during the emergency operation and so we had to start all over again.
Eventually we managed to track down another van we both agreed on in the town of Wollongong, about 100km south of the city and took the train along the coast to inspect it. Stubby is a 1983 cream Nissan Urvan poptop campervan owned by Gordon Blow, a 75 year old man who was only the second owner of the vehicle and had bought Stubby as a retirement treat so he and his wife could travel the country. As a consequence it was immaculately looked after and the cleanest car we had seen throughout our trawling; it also had a long rego (which helped us get round the extremely difficult problem of registering a vehicle when you are not a resident), personalised numberplate and a reliable motoring history backed up with the paperwork. On the flipside it lacked most of the necessary interior extras , was at the very top of our budget and hadn’t been on a long drive for eighteen years – Gordon having just ticked over the necessary mileage per year to keep it roadworthy – which left us dubious about whether it would survive our epic plans!
Whilst not our preferred choice, with time running out and reaching the end of our tether with the gruelling daily search process, we compromised and knocking a $1000 dollars off the asking price (and also gaining some bedding courtesy of pandering to the wife) found ourselves the proud owner of a new van. With a two ring gas stove and grill, large fridge, pull out awning with fisherman chairs, two man tent, storage box on the back, sink with pumped water and two sofas that pulled out into a giant double bed we had everything on board, it was just a question of working out how it all fitted. The irony should not be lost that I have never owned or bought a car in my life and all of a sudden found myself the father of an ancient campervan on the other side of the world...
Without insurance or a map our first adventure required us managing to drive back to Sydney from Wollongong, tackling the highways and city centre! Whilst getting heavily lost once in the CBD sector of town Stubby passed every test and was soon parked outside Rich’s uncle’s house without any mechanical problems. A thorough spring clean, quick shop to the Salvation Army to kit Stubby out with all the kitchen and living accessories and personalisation with Buddhist prayer flags and Balinese sarongs and it felt less like an old Grandpa’s van and more like our home on wheels for the next couple of months!
Before we could set out from Sydney I had to go and pick up my new bank card that mum had posted to Paul and Sindy which saw Stubby traverse the Sydney Harbour Bridge and enter the northern suburbs. Arriving at Forestville later than planned and chinwagging over a pile of chocolate muffins and hobnobs Paul and Sindy invited us to stay the night and ended up finding themselves submerged by a mound of secondhand crockery to be put through the dishwasher, a pile of dirty washing for laundry and a gigantic Nissan Urvan in their driveway whose faulty tail lights perplexed even Paul’s garage of gadgets.
We were thoroughly spoiled during our stay while Paul was in his element tinkering around with the mechanics in his workshop garage (ie, showing us how it worked!) while Sindy was more than happy to empty her old linen cupboard into the van. It gave us a couple of days to ransack the Warringah Mall for ipod adaptor, laptop, fridge and inverter to properly kit Stubby out for the long haul though this wasn’t without its problems as my card having not been used for over a month was suddenly stopped as I attempted to pay for our electronic goods because of suspected fraud! Only ringing Nationwide for the millionth time was I able to convince them that I was the purchaser though this took so long to authorise that the shop had closed by the time I came off the phone and we were sadly forced to spend another night in Paul’s bar/cinema.
It was lovely to see Tandia and Braedon, though their method of waking us up in the morning by throwing their entire collection of stuffed animals until we got out of bed was less desirable. Went to watch Braedon play a football match and was eerily taken aback by the uncanny similarities to Dom at that age; the nippy speediness, fearlessness in tackling boys twice his size and complete obsession with the ball to the exclusion of absolutely everything else.
Dropping Tandia and Braedon off at school on the Monday we continued back to the Warringah Shopping Mall and completed our shopping. Dropping into the NRMA store to buy our insurance and road assistance policy we were served by the indomitable Christine who in between setting up our details relayed her life story, argued with her bank over the phone about their poor customer service, gossiped about her regular customers who popped in to say hello and pulled her poor colleague Leisha into every conversation. She informed us that she was sorry to say that since the shop had installed CCTV cameras she was no longer able to give away freebies like she used to do (freebies being camp books worth $80!) but then disappeared into the back office and emerged with a couple of drinks bottles and $70 of maps saying it was “all she could find.” She rounded off our experience by then taking advantage of a loophole in her computer system to guarantee us a way of not having to pay the cancellation fee should we wish to stop our yearly insurance policy!
By the time we got back to Paul and Sindy’s laden with shopping and sorted out my laptop it was mid-afternoon. Paul, having just had an operation and restricted to crutches, was more than happy to let us stay for as long as we wanted as we were able to help out with the more mobile tasks around the house but before we could get too comfy we knew we had to force ourselves to get on the road and so reluctantly bade them farewell to begin our adventures!