Home Is Where My Car Is
By Reuben Whitehouse
6 Nov 2008
A couple of months ago we made a 4-week road-trip from northern New South Wales, back to Melbourne. We took our big Ford Falcon Stationwagon and converted it into living quarters by constructing a double mattress to fit in it's awesomely huge boot; with the seats folded down, those things allow a 6+ footer like me to lay out flat, with room to spare. We made the mattress out of the foam from an old sofa bed and it proved comfortable enough. What we didn't anticipate was the huge amount of discomfort you will encounter when spending long nights in a space which doesn't allow you to sit completely upright. It was mid-winter pretty much, so the sun went down at around 5pm leaving you with a couple of hours of cold and dark to sit and chat and drink through, before finally heading 'indoors' at around 8pm, to warm up. Most nights were spent on seedy caravan parks (owing to their proximity to the beach and the difficulty of getting away with 'free camping' on Australia's east coast), which meant there was often an eery light emitting from some not-so-far-off old lamppost. We lay down on our fronts and read by dim lantern-light until our ribs got sore or our eyes started to malfunction. Our newly-acquired big surfboards sat on the roof and a poorly-constructed shelter was pegged between car and the little 'cupboard' tent. The whole scene looked rather good by night and I captured a few scenes with the aid of my little (Panasonic) Lumix's 'manual mode' and trusty tripod.
