Retro 1996

Running away from home when you’re adults and have a couple of kids was always going to be a challenge. My wife, Debra and I hatched a plan to buy a bus, deck it out, sell the house and take off. It was a good plan and within reason it went well. Our original concept of buying a decked out bus for about $10K and fixing it up was blown out of the water when we begrudgingly looked at a bus that we had no intention of buying that was for sale for $38K. It was a pretty crappy old bus but when we went inside it was fitted out like a luxury apartment. We were both devastated but inspired as it ruined our simple idea just doing up a simple old bus. 

Back in the 90’s old school buses were selling for about $3-$7K. One day we happened to be at Ballarat Coachlines looking at a couple of cheap buses they had available. As we were discussing the merits of the buses for sale, we had to step aside for a coach to drive through and the owner casually mentioned that it was also for sale. We jokingly asked the price and were pleasantly surprised when he said he’d want at least 13K for it. So a few weeks later the Bilston family were proud owners of a 52 seat Hino Moonraker Coach with an 8 speed Volvo gearbox and a 10 litre Scania rear mounted diesel engine. Well, that was easy.

The obvious question here is “what’s the difference between a bus and a coach?” well as far as I can understand a coach has a sunken isle and raised seating and room underneath for all the luggage whereas a bus is low and flat with easy access and no luggage space.

Converting a coach to a motorhome was not a fast undertaking. The reason it was so cheap was that the seats were old and crappy and not really suitable for charters. And the windows leaked. The leaking windows had also started rusting the frame but fortunately for us we didn’t care about the seats as we ripped them all out and we fixed all the rusty bits when we lowered and rebuilt the floor.

We cut out the isle so that it lowered the floor height and gave us more headroom. We kept the front row of seats and had them reupholstered and fitted them with seatbelts. We then put in a new floor and built walls so that we ended up with a kitchen/living area at the front, a bedroom with two bunks for the girls and a stainless steel bathroom in the centre. In the rear section we put in a queen-size bed and cupboards for us and replaced the old rear window with a flash new sliding window with a flyscreen.

With the help of a few mates and calling in a few favours and a bit of bartering we managed to get it to a stage where we were able to consider running away.

We also made a car trailer and brought a dual cab Hilux 4 X 4 to drag around behind us, when we were finished it was quite an imposing rig parked out the front of mum and dads.

We had sold our house and winter was coming quickly so we abandoned Ballarat and headed to Michael and Dominique’s farm near Inverell in NSW.

The farm road in was a bit of a challenge but we made it through okay and ended up spending a couple of months there finishing of the bits we hadn’t finished when we left Ballarat.

When it was finished, we headed off on our two-year trip around Australia. We had a great time on the road and lived in luxury while doing so, especially when we put up our annex. We picked up work here and there to cover costs and keep us going.

There was the odd day when things went wrong but either we sorted them out or some passing good samaritan in the middle of nowhere turned up and gave us a hand. I’ve just noticed after all these years that both of our main issues involved the front passenger side of the bus. The first one was an airbag and the second a flat tyre. A very flat tyre.

After our two years of travelling around Australia we headed back to Ballarat and sold the bus. We sold it for $70K including the trailer which was a pretty exceptional price for a bus back in those days. It probably cost us about $60K all up to build it excluding our labour.

We could have brought three quarters of a house for that price but instead we downsized to back packs and got away on a different big adventure. But that’s another story.