Camper Van Hunting

Mar 6 – Into town

This morning an Australian couple came by to show us their van, a 1981 Nissan Urvan. They were doing what backpackers do just in their own country. The van looked pretty good. It drove well and had a pretty good layout. They were traveling with their dog, Banjo, and he played with Snow and Juneau while we checked out the van. We took it for a test drive, Beau and I were quite interested in it. After they left we headed into town to check out the CBD. We went into the visitors center to get some info on where to go and what to see. Then we went back to the little Indian place for lunch. It was yummy and cheap so why mess with a good thing. After lunch we walked through the botanical gardens and over to the war memorial. This is apparently a great place to get an awesome view of the city. Unfortunately it was about 5pm and the memorial closed to visitors at that time so we couldn't go up it for the great view. We decided we'll have to come back. We had been planning on meeting another girl and her van this evening but she couldn't meet until 7pm and wasn't willing to meet us at a train stop on our line. It would have taken about 2hrs to get back to Monique and Ingo's if we met up with her so we decided against it. We really just wanted another comparison, we weren't super interested in this van. It was blue with clouds on it. We headed back and were just in time for dinner. We spent the rest of the evening with Monique and Ingo. Beau and Ingo have been having fun playing soccer on Playstation. Beau and I thought the van this morning looked best of any of the ads we had seen and the guy seemed like he had taken good care of it. We got in touch with him about taking the van to a mechanic tomorrow.

Melbourne CBD

The city and Botanical Gardens

The War Memorial

Mar 7 – Checking the van out

Beau spent some of the morning finding a mechanic in a town called Geelong. That's where the van couple is staying, they were just in Melbourne for a few days. Geelong is about an hours drive from here but it's a two hour train ride as you have to go into the city and then back out again. Beau set off on his merry way and I picked up some groceries. I had a quiet day to myself. Beau got back just in time for dinner. The mechanic thought the van was in good condition for it's age and couldn't see any problems with it. We had decided that if the van was good we'd buy it so Beau had given them a deposit. We were pretty excited about our new van.

Mar 8 – Picking up Dotti

We made arrangements with the van couple to meet part way between Melbourne and Geelong at one of the train stations. Beau couldn't have taken the van yesterday because we had to wait for today to get the cash out. We are only allowed to take out $1000 each per day with our bank cards. So I had $4000 in 50's on the train. One of those times you really hope you don't bump into the wrong people. We met up with the couple no problem. Beau and the guy talked about the van a bit then we made the money exchange. We felt pretty conspicuous counting all that money out. But it was all there and Beau and I had our “new” van to drive back to Diamond Creek. We were discussing names for the van, Urv was one option but vans tend to be girls. We settled on “Dotti” since she's technically a Datsun, what Nissan was formerly known as. Once back at the house we set about the task of cleaning out the van and figuring out what we need for it. We decided we want to make a little folding table and we discussed ways of accomplishing that. We made bean burgers for dinner and while Monique and Ingo were a little skeptical when we told them what was for dinner they really enjoyed them. I also made greek salad to go with.

 

 

Mar 9 – The Movies

Beau and I had planned on going into town today. Unfortunately right before we were going to leave we double checked our train tickets and we could find Beau's anywhere. We search high and low but to no avail. It must have fallen out of his pocket on the train. We were both pretty bummed because those tickets hadn't been cheap. Since it was already afternoon we decided we'd go into town earlier tomorrow. Instead we decided to work on some modifications to the van. We want to build a cover for a shelf area that doubles as a table. We headed to the hardware store but their main car park is underground and we weren't sure how tall the van is with the roof cage on it. She's quite long especially with the bike rack on the back and pretty tall with the roof rack. We'll have to measure the height to see where we can fit. After the hardware store we headed to the grocery store and had similar problems parking. We barely fit in a stall, the bike rack had to hang over the center median. Back at the house Beau started trying to figure out the best way for him to create his shelf/table. Monique and Ingo got home and suggested we go to a movie. Ingo had been planning on going with some guys from work but their plans fell through. We had a look at movies that were playing, Monique doesn't like violent movies, so the girls were going to go to one movie and the boys another. We had some dinner at the food court before hand. Ingo and Beau went to see an action movie called Contraband while Monique and I went to a chick flick called The Vow. It was a sweet and sad movie, think the Notebook or Timetravellers Wife (all with Rachel McAdams). After our movie Monique and I got a very decadent hot chocolate while we waited for the guys movie to finish. They really enjoyed their movie and we enjoyed ours.