We Were Just Going to Have a Look

While our Melbourne house was apparently still deciding whether it wanted to be sold, we moved again.

This time, to Kalbar.

By now we'd been living in Loki for a while.

And honestly, we'd done pretty well.

Loki was only 15 feet long, but he'd taken us from Victoria to Queensland, survived the mysterious fridge issues, housed us during our six-week stay in Sherwood and got us through our off-grid adventures at Narangba.

There were two adults.

Two dogs.

And not a great deal of personal space.

But we'd made it work.

We still didn't really know what we were doing long-term.

Maybe the Melbourne house would finally sell and we'd buy somewhere in Queensland.

Maybe we'd live in the caravan for a while.

Maybe something else would happen.

At this point, we'd learnt not to get too attached to any particular plan.

Then it started raining.

And it kept raining

One day of rain in a caravan is fine.

You read.

Watch TV.

Make a coffee.

Tell yourself how cosy it is.

Two days?

Slightly less charming.

By day three, I was done.

It wasn't just raining.

There was water everywhere.

The ground around us was absolutely soaked, with water ankle-deep in places.

Wal and Cheech couldn't just wander around outside.

So now there were four of us trapped inside a 15-foot caravan.

Col.

Me.

Wal.

Cheech.

Fifteen feet.

For three bloody days.

There are only so many times you can step over a dog before the romance of small-space living begins to wear a little thin.

😂

I peaked out.

Completely.

I looked at Col and basically told him that if this was how we were going to be living while we worked out what came next, we needed a bigger caravan.

Because I could not do this indefinitely in Loki.

Either we bought something bigger...

or I was going to leave Col in the caravan and go and live near Mum and Dad in NSW.

😂

I wasn't saying we were going to travel Australia.

We hadn't made that decision.

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

But we had some savings, and we'd already spent months living in a caravan.

If we were going to continue doing that while life sorted itself out, I wanted to be comfortable.

And preferably able to walk from one end of my home to the other without climbing over Col and two dogs.

As luck would have it...

There was a caravan show coming up in Brisbane.

Perfect.

We'd go and have a look.

Just a look.

We weren't rushing into anything.

We had a pretty good idea of what we wanted if we did eventually decide to upgrade.

Something around 20 feet.

A bit more room.

A proper ensuite.

We thought we'd probably like the ensuite somewhere around the middle of the van.

Basically, something that would make longer-term caravan living a little easier without going completely overboard.

Very sensible.

Very measured.

Very responsible.

So off we went to the caravan show.

To look.

Then we walked into a Prime Edge

We hadn't been at the show very long.

In fact, I reckon it was only about the third caravan we looked at.

We walked inside.

Oh.

This was different.

It felt open.

There was room.

There was storage.

Actual clothing storage.

After living in Loki, this felt positively palatial.

I could immediately picture us living in it.

Wal and Cheech could actually exist somewhere without automatically being under our feet.

Col and I might even be able to pass each other without one of us having to reverse.

😂

We really liked it.

Which was inconvenient.

Because we'd only just arrived.

You can't buy the third caravan you look at when you've got an entire caravan show to explore.

That would be ridiculous.

So we did the sensible thing.

We walked away.

We looked at everything

Well, maybe not literally everything.

But it certainly felt like it.

Van after van.

Different layouts.

Different brands.

Different sizes.

Some we liked.

Some we didn't.

Some probably ticked plenty of boxes on paper but just didn't feel right when we walked inside.

And all the while, we kept comparing them to that Prime Edge.

Eventually we looked at each other.

You know what happened next.

We went back.

😂

There was one more little detail

The van we'd been looking at was the actual display van from the show.

Which meant we wouldn't have to place an order and wait months for one to be built.

It was there.

It was available.

We could buy it as-is.

And we could pick it up in about two weeks.

Well.

That was convenient.

Dangerously convenient.

Remember, we'd arrived at the caravan show because I'd spent three days trapped in the rain with Col and two dogs and had decided Loki was no longer big enough for however long this strange in-between stage of our lives was going to last.

We weren't planning a lap of Australia.

We hadn't decided to become full-time travellers.

We didn't even know whether we'd still end up buying another house.

We just knew one thing.

If we were going to live in a caravan, we wanted one we could actually live in.

So we dipped into our savings.

And signed the paperwork.

We'd bought a new caravan.

A bloody big black and stormy blue Prime Edge.

At this stage, he didn't have a name.

He was simply the caravan that was going to make our uncertain little life considerably more comfortable.

We walked into that show telling ourselves we were just going to have a look.

Two weeks later, we'd be coming back to collect him.

What we didn't know was that picking up our beautiful new caravan wasn't going to be quite the smooth, exciting experience we'd imagined.

Because apparently even buying a brand-new van couldn't simply go according to plan.

But that's another story.