The Van

Since were going to on the road for an extended period the Caravan will literally be our home. We needed to make sure we make the right decision and enjoy being in the space otherwise evertime we entered the van we would be reminded of our bad choice. Having said that it doesn't have to be perfect just functional, reliable, comfortable.

Our first van was a Jayco Freedom which served us well including a 3 month trip which took us from the deep South West of Western Australia to the far flung destination of Darwin in the Northern Territory and back again. It did have its limitations in space and facilities so the time had come to upgrade to a few more creature comforts.

So the list began, having your own shower and toilet would be a nice addition. In some parks the ablutions are not always up to scratch or can be stretched to limits during peak times. We also found there some genuine savings in free camping but a lack of toilet facilities made it uncomfotable to spend more than 1 or 2 nights away from a shower. A washing machine was also on the list as we found spending a day competing for a washing machine the having to watch over it a waste of relaxation time. Besides some people took fit to wash dog blankets, oily work and fishing clothes. 

Now I remember the time we put in choosing our first van and did not releash the idea of visting every caravan dealer in the west over and over again trying to find just the right van. This time we decided to look for a brand new van, we had serveral years to look surely we could save enough and find something by then.

So off to the Caravan and Camping shows we go, generally held twice a year one being a caravan show the other an 4x4 show. There were a number of vans we looked at Jaycos, Coromals, Paramounts, Millards etc. We started looking at the various vans on offer prefering one over the other finally in November 2011 we made a commitemient we need to choose something by the final show in 2012. We almost had a prefered van, a Coromal Lifestyle which seem to fit what we wanted for the budget we had set. Now this was November and we had untill March to sign up for something giving us approx 6 months for it to be built so figured we would have the money saved by the  time it was ready to pick up.

We did the 4 x 4 show in November and my wife came across the Reteat brand (I think she had been looking at caravans secretly without me). She really like the Brampton but I mentioned it was outside of our budget. We looked at the Fraiser which was a bit smaller (by 1ft) but she wasn't keen. We asked they could reconfigure the Brampton to bring the price down but they wern't able to do that but we were able to negotiate a price to extend the Fraser by 1 foot. Finally we agreed and signed up settling on a trade in for our old van and a delivery date of 9 months from Nov 2012.

About 2 Months from Delivery we went in to choose colours. Now i'm not sure how other people view the importance of colours in caravans but Anne really was anxious to choose the right colours to the point she stressed about it and had trouble sleeping. At one stage she though she had chosen fluro colours for the seats. The dealer was kind enough to send photos of the chosen colours to put her mind at rest.