Here's Bruce

We decided today would be the day that we would own a campervan and it was...

Introducing...’Brucey Van-ee’- as Nabeela has hilariously named him- a dashing, if a tad greying, old banger, of the 1985 variety. His top pops and he is quite a long fella with lots of mod-cons including a CD player and Air Con! His parents were Mr and Mrs Toyota Hiace and we decided to name him Bruce, being the typical Aussies that we are!

Brucey came from a car yard and cost us 6000 dollars, with 2 months Rego (like Tax and 3^rd party insurance in one) thrown in. We had looked at another van earlier in the day, being sold by a lovely old couple who- in their own words- were ‘just too old for it now’. That van had quite a few issues and didn’t come with the extras that Brucey came with, so we decided to skip making an offer and hopped on a bus back into Adelaide, to look at our- soon to be new- van. 

From the first glimpse of his shiny exterior and neat interior we knew he was the van for us and trying to contain our excitement we quickly whizzed through the rigmarole of bartering, paying and signing all the paperwork. Soon we were driving out of the car yard and our first stop was... a huge baby shop. We needed a car seat of course!

The annoying sales woman informed us that you now need to have car seats bolted to a special metal loop in the floor of the vehicle or nearby and that children under 4 (or 7 she wasn’t sure) must be seated in the back seat of the vehicle. She couldn’t advise us if the seat she recommended would actually fit into the campervan or if it would have a hole for the metal loop to attach, so we just had to pay for it and hope it would work out. Thankfully, after spending hours combing through the van ad reading various instructions we have got it sorted and Nabeela is fine sat in it. It does shatter our dream of all three of us sat in the front singing silly songs and looking ahead, towards the open road and our new life. Instead Nabeela and I are sat apart from each other, and even further from Ryan, with a side-view of everything.

By the time we got back to the caravan park we were exhausted and didn’t have the energy to organise ourselves for our departure the following day.