Buying our Caravan

Where to begin, well I’ll start with a funny story on our decision to buy a caravan, it all begins with us having a family holiday in March 2010. We had decided to take a family camping holiday to Dubbo and stopping at Mudgee for a couple of days on the way. So we arrived at Mudgee pitched the tent in what seemed like a good spot and for the next couple of days it was blowing a gale, we enjoyed Mudgee going to the history museum, honey mead brewery, and just enjoying the township. We packed up and headed off to Dubbo via the Castlereagh Hwy and Gulgong. When we arrived at Gulgong we were supposed to make a left onto Goolma/Mudgee road and head across to the Mitchell Hwy wellington then onto Dubbo, well we missed the turn and decided to continue along the Castlereagh Hwy, we ended up going through some extremely small towns and then ended up on the golden Hwy Dunedoo. We continued on through to Dubbo, what a great mistake and it only added an extra ½ hour to the trip.

We had booked into the big 4 at Dubbo for 4 nights being members it seemed like the sensible idea. The facilities and park were fantastic perfect for families, and the bonus we had left the gale force winds behind, we set up camp and took Obie swimming and let him play on the parks jumping pillow and play equipment.

For Obie’s 3^rd birthday we went to Dubbo zoo the weather was perfect, and the day was fantastic walking the whole park to see everything.  We went to sleep that night and about 5 am I woke to a light shower outside, falling back to sleep I got awoken at 7am by Skysie frantically telling me she is floating, my response half asleep was “how can you float in the tent?” she says wake up and feel the floor we are flooded. GREAT everything inside the tent is saturated except a few things like one set of clothes each, so the decision was made to pack up even though we had 2 more nights paid for.

We packed everything up in the rain and drove down to the amenities block to shower before heading to the goal and then home. On the way home we had decided that whilst we enjoyed camping, we just didn’t like the idea of having the canvas leak again, so buying a caravan or camper van (Winnebago) for travelling was for us, fewer hassles in setting it up and no canvas to leak. Well a few months have passed and nothing we had put buying a caravan on the bottom of the pile until grandma and poppy mark came for a visit Christmas 2010, Obie thought it was fantastic his grandma and poppy mark have a "caraban" as he calls it, this sparked a fire in me to get a caravan for our family holidays, over the next couple of months we either visited grandma and poppy mark or they had visited us whilst they had a base in Queanbeyan just near Canberra.

Let the research begin and scouring of eBay and some magazines, the decision was to buy an older van and make sure we enjoy using it before getting something more decent, so 16 foot 4 berth single axle should be perfect for us. After searching eBay and watching a number of caravan’s sell for $2500 - $4500 we continued our search.

 I found a 16 foot York up for auction starting price of $2250 with 12 months registration, in pretty good condition and the interior only having some overhead cupboards and kitchen bench/cupboard and a wardrobe, I showed Skysie and we decided to place a bid not thinking we would win as most had gone out of our price range it was approximately the 15^th April 2011 when we placed the bid and I only placed a bid for the starting price one to find out if there was a reserve and two because then I wasn’t too committed to it.

I spoke to Skysie again and we decided our max bid would be $2400 if we get outbid, oh well we just keep looking. Which I did keep doing as well as keeping an eye on the progress of the Auction, the auction ended on Friday 22^nd April 2011 at 7.51pm.

I was luckily on my night off and I said to Skysie even if we are over your parents or doing something we know that we have placed our maximum bid and what happens, happens. So it gets to about 7.40pm and we have finished dinner and I log on to eBay and check the progress and funnily enough no one has placed a bid so I kept the laptop with me logged on to eBay watching the last 10 mins of the auction while watching the footy and it gets to 2 mins to go and still no other bidders I said to Skysie unless someone places a last minute bid we have won the caravan, we sat there eyes glue on the timer on the auction and even counted down when there was 10 seconds to go and we had…… won the caravan for the sum of …. The starting price $2250.

Wow I can’t believe it not even another bidder, well the next couple of days were spent with Skysie’s parents at dog shows at castle hill for Easter shows and Obie was entered in the tiny tots handlers which he won both days, somehow we even managed an Easter egg hunt for him before going to the Sunday show.

Next post I’ll tell of the adventure of picking up the caravan.

Cheers till next time

Benj.