Our lives are driven by dreams. We gather dust and shape it into beauty, sprinkling zest and obsessions onto projects as we go. Sometimes they come to fruition, glorious starbursts where we sit back with joy and surprise at what we are capable of, together. And some don't go as far as we expect, but have been a fabulous ride anyway.

This is the story of our bus that never went as far down the roads we imagined for it, but is still dear to our hearts as it rests amongst the gums in our garden. And she flew, this dream, because we have such warm memories of our little life inside her.

'Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly' - Langston Hughes

Ten years ago I lured my beautiful Englishman to the wide open spaces of Australia with the promise of building a life here free from the problems we had encountered in the UK. We wanted land and a place to call home and that just wasn't forthcoming on our wages there. Arriving, we were a bit gobsmacked about rent as we had been living in a horse lorry not paying any rent at all (check out that story here). So we bought a bus on EBay, as you do, despite everyone's advice that you couldn't possibly find anywhere to live in it, and then waited for the universe to provide, as she does. Luckily a mate of my Dad's offered us a space by his bluegum plantation on 200 acres near Angelsea, Victoria. It arrived on a lowloader truck as she didn't go. The plan was to fix her up so we could drive it around Australia one day.

For six months we pretty much lived half in, half out of a hayshed whilst we endeavoured to fix this beast of a school bus to a liveable standard. My boy was 8 at the time and we had found a blim caravan for him which have us a tad more space.

We had no funds at the time so everything we did in that bus was proper 'wombled' - The Wombles lived in burrows, where they helped the environment by collecting and recycling rubbish in creative ways. I loved the word my mother in law used for our efforts to find trash to turn to treasure. Jamie had a job as a landscape gardener and was always making tip runs a.k.a Womble missions, so that was pretty convenient for us. Floorboards became bench tops, dirty bits of hardwood became polished table legs, packing boxes were pulled apart for plywood for shelves. We kept two of the seats for our 'lounge' and found a cheap wood burner that kept us toasty warm in winter, and an old discarded gas oven. Even the batteries for the solar were wombled from a car scrapyard and we saved every darn mix matched screw from anything we pulled apart.

“If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled, or composted, then it should be restricted, designed or removed from production.” – Pete Seeger, Folk Singer & Social Activist

Jarrah washing the dishes, a bit of a blurry shot that has a bit of romance about it for me

The bus without the cooker in it, once we'd moved it to her final resting spot. She looks a lot tidier inside at this point

Our bedroom nook, with the Labrinth chalked on the roof as a reminder of Rocky Valley, near Tintagel in Cornwall

The bus used to be used on a route around us, so it was apt she'd come back to where she came from. The bus ribbon read 'Lorne', 'Special', 'Chanel' 'Football' and 'Apollo Bay'. I loved the scratched graffiti on the walls from school kids in the 1960's, and Jamie added his own. We loved living in her, being right on the edge of the gum trees and spending so much time outside in her all the time.

Jarrah's first guitar and starting to learn - he's now an amazing musician and I'm super proud of him!


Despite our best efforts, there was no way this girl was getting on the road. Parts were far more expensive that we were used to in England, and we had to resign ourselves to realising that we were never going anywhere in this darling. When we finally saved up enough for the deposit on our house, we found her a place in the garden and let the gums grow up around her. She became a beautiful place for guests to stay, that loved nestling in for weeks at a time with the woodburner going, swearing they'd never leave.






Yet after a few years, she was rusting in parts and leaking, so we had to do some repairs to the roof. When we started investigating, we realised that a lot of the plywood was water streaked and mouldy, and we decided to rip all the old stuff out and rebuild the inside. We didn't need her to function as a fully liveable bus anymore and decided that no-one ever used the kitchen anyway, so we'd make her into a guest room and a writing studio and a meditation room for me. It was funny ripping out all the old wombled wood. We saved some of it for a benchtop and other projects and saved all the screws and began to remake the inside.









We decided to cantilever the bed out to make it roomier and we put floorboards in too, rather than the dusty carpet we used to have in there. A trip to the opportunity shop and I'd found enough things to decorate it. It's much brighter, cleaner and there are less places for the spiders to hide.






So this is the story of the bus that never went. However, she was a good dream, and continues to bring us pleasure, and our guests love her. It doesn't seem to matter that she never chugged her way around Australia. She's been a great ride anyway. Some of you already know us pretty well by now, and we have some other vehicles for actually driving into the sunset!

If you'd like to read about them, please wander over to these steemposts:

Tuning into a Better Frequency: Mountain Musings & Our Landrover

Not Cooking with Gas: A Vanlife Cooking Solution

TruckLove: Our Bedford TK Horse Lorry

TruckLove: Our Bedford Library Lorry - where our love story started

Would you believe I still have two other vehicle conversion/stories to share with you? We really need to curb these vehicle dreamings of ours...!!!

If you have a heart beat, there is still time for your dreams

*I'm not sure who said this - but I love it. As long as our hearts beat, we'll be dreaming of the open road in our travelling homes - it's the best life I know. *


**Please feel free to share your stories of buses, vans, caravans and other tiny rolling homes with me - I love hearing about what others do and tiny homes are an obsession of mine ever since I once drove around Australia in a 1976 Toyota Corolla, sleeping in the back of that! I've never been happier - well, I have - in other live in vehicles! **