Living on the road

By Malcolm Street

I thought a 25ft-plus motorhome was what one needed to live in comfort ‘on the road’ full time. That was until I met up with Di and Dick Drayton.

Their rolling home is a Mercedes Sprinter van – well, it has been fully converted into a comfortable and liveable motorhome, or motorcamper, as some in the trade like to call them.

Di and Dick are a very friendly and down to earth couple. I first met them quite a few years ago at a Campervan and Motorhome Australia (CMCA) Rally, when I was wandering around taking happy snaps for the magazine.

Even now I suspect that Dick has trouble believing that strolling around a CMCA rally, taking photographs and having the odd Happy Hour drink is classed as a “job” – he reminds me every time I see him! Actually, the reason I stopped to take some pics is that Dick plays a mandolin and he and some of his fellow campers were making music in a very fine style.

The Drayton’s introduction to the campervan/motorhome way of life occurred in 1992 when they inherited a VW Kombi. They began with weekends away and eventually became aware of the CMCA and the many rallies that the club holds. It wasn’t long before they became active members of their local chapter.

In 1999 Dick and Di decided to upsize the campervan to a larger Mercedes, a long wheelbase Sprinter 412. It has a rear bed across the back, toilet/shower, all the usual cooking facilities and a dinette at the front. Although it’s not a particularly big motorcamper, it’s a size that suits them very well.

“You can park it in the supermarket without any trouble at all,” said Di. “We designed our motorhome to be totally self-sufficient, with an inverter and almost everything 12V”. There’s even room for their canine travelling companion, Tippi – he’s quite small and fits in very easily.

The year 2000 marked retirement for the Draytons and they took to the road, more or less full time, returning to their Victorian home every so often. However, in 2002 Dick and Di became true Wanderers when they sold their house.

According to Dick, “We didn’t like returning home, so we sold up and took to the road full time. On our son’s property, we built a big shed, large enough to park our motorcamper in, and we spend about four weeks a year there”.

The Draytons acknowledge that their lifestyle would not be everyone’s choice: “It suits us just fine, but we realise that some people need a home to return to on a regular basis.

That is one of the benefits of the motorhome lifestyle – there are multiple ways to enjoy it. Not everyone has to do things the same way. We love it – if we don’t like the length of the grass any more we just move on, rather than mowing it!”

Of course, when travelling you don’t need to leave all your home comforts behind. Besides all the usual items you find in a long-term motorcamper, somewhere in the Drayton Mercedes is a storage place for a full-size electric sewing machine and a banjo, not to mention Dick’s mandolin, and as I chatted to Di, she was busy sewing together patches for patchwork quilts – at CMCA rallies, quite a few of the ladies get together and make the quilts for chosen charities.

There’s also a small wine cellar aboard the Mercedes, although ‘cellar’ is not quite the correct term, mainly because it’s an insulated alloy box on the roof. I was a little surprised when Dick whipped out a fold-up ladder and, after fossicking around in the box, produced a very acceptable bottle of red.

When travelling, Dick and Di prefer bush camping because they don’t think that caravan parks offer enough. That means they get to use their camp oven, which is also hidden on board. Washing is done by hand and they have a hand wringer that attaches to the bullbar.

The Draytons love the outback rather than coastal areas and I was interested to learn that have no real desire to travel overseas as many Australians do.