Well as I mentioned, I had run out of excuses – I was made redundant in May this year and given six weeks notice. Time to bite the bullet and buy a van. There was simply no way to get out of it this time – I was going to be traveling around Australia, so I thought I might as well buy a van that I wanted. Who would have thought there were so many options to choose from.

Best to sit down and make a list of what the van must have. After discussion, Peter and I could only really come up with two things:

• must have a double or queen bed (god knows Peter could not sleep on his own on a cold night, who would keep his feet warm?)
• cheap – our budget for a van only extended to $25,000

So the search began. We started by looking at some locally and after disappointment decided to check out the net.  After only a short time (one week) we found something that looked like it might suit. After a bit on negotiation with the dealer we bought a 17ft Kedron for $22,800 – over the net. We traveled from Mackay to the Gold Coast to pick it up and I am pleased to say we were not disappointed. It looked even better in real life than it did over the net. After picking it up we drove home with no issues living in the hope that this was a precedent to how our travels would go.

I think we  truly got lucky – apparently the “Kedron“ is quite a good off-road van with an excellent reputation for sound craftsmanship and durability. All I can say is that it was simply “beginners luck”.

The van was pretty well set up but there would still be a few things to tweak before the trip.