Meet Maximus. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Two weeks after going to the Brisbane caravan show just to have a look, it was time to collect our new caravan.

We were ridiculously excited.

After months of living in little Loki, we were about to have space.

Actual space.

Storage.

A proper kitchen.

Room for clothes.

Room for Wal and Cheech.

Room for Col and me to pass each other without one of us having to reverse.

It was going to be magnificent.

There was just one small logistical issue.

What do we do with Wal?

We were staying at the caravan park in Boonah at the time, and obviously we needed to tow Loki with us.

Which meant Shaun, Loki, Col, me and all our worldly possessions were heading off to swap caravans.

Our lovely neighbours Rob and Donna, who were in the motorhome beside us, happily offered to look after Wal for the day.

Cheechy, however, came with us.

So off we went.

Col.

Me.

Cheechy.

Loki.

And presumably enough belongings to furnish a small country.

We just didn't realise that last bit yet.

Goodbye Loki

There was something a little bittersweet about saying goodbye to Loki.

He'd got us from Victoria to Queensland.

He'd been our home through Hay, Parkes, Dubbo, Willowbank, Sherwood, Narangba and Kalbar.

He'd survived electrical dramas, chunky milk, torrential rain, two humans and two dogs.

And now we had to empty him.

Completely.

Everything we owned that was in Loki had to be transferred straight into Maximus at the caravan place.

And this was when I discovered something quite remarkable.

Apparently Loki had been operating as a TARDIS.

Because there is absolutely no logical explanation for the amount of crap that came out of that 15-foot caravan.

😂

We started moving things across.

And kept moving things.

And kept moving things.

Eventually the bed in Maximus disappeared beneath a mountain of our belongings.

Then the floor started disappearing too.

There was stuff everywhere.

Forget beautifully organising our new caravan.

At this point the system was basically:

Put it in Maximus. We'll deal with it later.

I genuinely had no idea how we'd managed to fit all of it into Loki in the first place.

Handover

Then came the actual handover.

There is a lot to take in when you're collecting a new caravan.

Switches.

Water.

Power.

Solar.

Batteries.

Slides.

Air systems.

Appliances.

Awning.

Toilet.

Things being demonstrated while you nod confidently as though you're going to remember any of it once you leave.

And there were already a couple of things that weren't quite right.

The wood rack that should have been there...

wasn't.

Then there was the front slide-out.

Somebody had forgotten to connect the power to it.

Not exactly what you expect when collecting a brand-new caravan.

But it was dealt with, and eventually we were ready to go.

Well...

almost.

Now we just need to leave

Before driving away, we needed to get Maximus into the correct auto-level position for travelling.

And because Shaun has air suspension, we also needed to get his airbags sitting correctly.

Maximus has an onboard air compressor that could be used to pump up Shaun's airbags.

Excellent.

Except nobody seemed entirely certain how to actually do it.

What followed was approximately 30 minutes of people trying to work out the air system while we sat there with our brand-new caravan, Cheechy, and the entire contents of our former home piled inside it.

Eventually we got there.

Finally.

We were ready to leave.

And then we remembered something.

Insurance.

We hadn't insured the bloody van.

😂

Quick phone call.

Insurance organised on the run.

Because apparently that's something you're supposed to think about before driving your brand-new caravan out onto the road.

Minor detail.

Now we could finally head back to Boonah.

Enter the Bruce Highway

We'd already spent considerably longer at the caravan place than expected.

But at least the drive home should be straightforward.

Nope.

There was a police incident on the Bruce Highway.

Traffic crawled.

And crawled.

And crawled.

For about an hour and a half.

Our trip back ended up taking roughly an hour longer than it should have.

By the time we finally pulled back into the caravan park at Boonah, it was dark.

Wal was waiting for us after his day with Rob and Donna.

We had our beautiful new caravan.

We were tired.

But we'd made it.

Now we just needed to set up.

Why won't the stabiliser go down?

We started getting Maximus settled onto the site.

And discovered one of the stabiliser legs wouldn't operate properly.

Fantastic.

Initially we didn't know what was going on.

It wasn't bent.

We eventually discovered that the pin that made the cogs function had broken.

Brand-new caravan.

First night.

One stabiliser already refusing to participate.

Still.

We'd deal with it.

We had our new home.

Let's get inside and start enjoying it.

Then we tried the toilet

Remember, by now it was dark.

We'd had the handover.

Transferred the entire contents of Loki.

Spent half an hour sorting out air suspension.

Remembered at the last minute that insurance might be a good idea.

Sat crawling on the Bruce Highway for an hour and a half.

Got back to Boonah.

Started setting up.

Discovered the stabiliser problem.

We were done.

And then...

the toilet wasn't working properly.

Our lovely new Maximus had a Thetford toilet with an electric flush.

Except something wasn't right.

Eventually it became apparent that the wiring had been reversed.

Of course it had.

😂

At this stage, I imagine Loki sitting somewhere with his new owners thinking:

Miss me yet?

Finding someone to fix it

The next challenge was getting the toilet looked at.

Col was still working and taking Shaun with him.

Which meant I was at the caravan park with Maximus...

and no vehicle capable of towing him anywhere.

So taking the van into a caravan repairer wasn't really an option.

Not that it would have helped much.

I started ringing service agents trying to find someone who could deal specifically with a Thetford toilet under warranty.

Phone call.

No.

Another phone call.

No.

Another.

Can't fit you in.

Another.

Three weeks.

And on it went.

I made a lot of phone calls.

Eventually I found Stellen Caravan Works in Ipswich.

And, even better, they were mobile.

They could come to us.

Hallelujah.

Enter Steven

Steven from Stellen came out to the caravan park and looked at the toilet.

Yep.

Wiring problem.

He sorted it.

We had a functioning toilet.

Another sentence I never expected to be genuinely excited about.

😂

While he was there, he also looked at another annoying little problem we'd discovered.

The door didn't close properly.

It wasn't lining up and catching the way it should.

Steven worked out that the seal was stopping it from closing properly.

A small section needed to be cut back so the catch could actually lock into place.

Sorted.

Toilet working.

Door closing.

We were getting there.

And then we unpacked

Once the immediate dramas were under control, we could finally start turning Maximus into our home.

Everything that had been dumped onto the bed and across the floor during the Great Loki Evacuation had to find somewhere to live.

And this was when I finally got one of the things I'd loved about Maximus from the moment we saw him at the caravan show.

Storage.

For months, a heap of our clothes had been living in boxes in the back of Shaun because there simply wasn't room for them in Loki.

Now we could bring them inside.

And unpack them.

Into actual cupboards.

Like civilised people.

😂

Slowly, the piles disappeared.

The floor reappeared.

The bed reappeared.

Our clothes came out of Shaun.

Wal and Cheech found their spots.

And Maximus started feeling less like a caravan we'd just bought...

and more like home.

It had certainly been an interesting introduction.

A missing wood rack.

Forgotten power to the slide-out.

Thirty minutes trying to work out the air system.

Last-minute insurance.

A police incident and a very long trip home.

A broken stabiliser mechanism.

A toilet wired backwards.

A door that wouldn't shut properly.

And enough belongings to make us question the basic laws of physics inside Loki.

But finally...

we were in.

We still didn't know what we were going to do next.

We didn't know whether we'd eventually buy another house.

We certainly hadn't decided to travel Australia.

Maximus had been bought for one simple reason:

If we were going to live in a caravan while we figured out our lives...

we wanted to be comfortable doing it.

And now we were.

For the moment, anyway.

Because while we were settling into Maximus, the other two big pieces of our lives were starting to move.

That second offer on our Melbourne house was becoming very real.

And Col was rapidly reaching the end of his patience with work.

We were about to have a decision to make.