March 5, 2008
If you've only ever cursed one on the highway, chances are you don't know the truth of the motor-home lifestyle. But any one of the hundreds of motor-home owners who descended on Nelson at the weekend would soon put you right. Geoff Collett reports.
``Beeing Free'' is trundling down a narrow Brightwater road towards Teapot Valley at a sedate 70kmh, cutesy bee toys suspended in the rear window. Whether their merry bouncing in time with the vehicle's sway is a soothing distraction for following motorists or simply increases the urge for a cathartic bit of road rage probably depends a bit on how you feel about campervans in the first place.
In this case, it's hard to not feel benevolent, not when a stoppage up ahead leads 76-year-old George Allen to alight from the driver's seat and wander back to offer to let you through ahead of him when the way is clear.
He's the classic affable old bloke, living proof of the relaxing powers of the retirement lifestyle he and wife Noeline have adopted with their mobile holiday home.
Allen is a retired farmer from Hamilton. He was a hobbyist beekeeper, too, hence the bee thing.
As he puts it, once they sold the farm, they decided they were going to be free. They've been on the road in the South Island on this trip for three months so far, with another month ahead. Done the Molesworth, the Rainbow, heading for Hokitika and the Wildfoods Festival next weekend, then to Warbirds Over Wanaka before trundling back north. They're taking their time, seeing what they want to see.
He's at Brightwater for the weekend because ... well, because he could, but more because Nelson is hosting its biggest ever gathering of motorhome owners. Hundreds of them, from everywhere, at least 300 vehicles ranging from humble campervans to grand buses and ``fifth-wheelers'' (caravans on an articulated trailer).
This is peak season for motorhome touring, and motorhome touring is booming. Many of these vehicles and their occupants - typically mum and dad shot of the kids - have been on the road for weeks, maybe months, dawdling about the place, stopping wherever takes their fancy.
The Nelson rally is one popular destination, the wildfoods event another, and the highlight of the motorhome calendar is the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association's Easter rally, being held in Cromwell this year, with 800 vehicles expected.
It doesn't take long wandering around Teapot Valley's Christian Camp to reinforce the popular stereotypes that are expected when a flotilla of mobile homes rolls into the neighbourhood: mostly over 60, mostly retired, mostly middle-class, mostly white. Plenty of Marys and Dawns, Kens and Georges.
There's that thing for cringe-inducing puns and twee slogans stencilled somewhere on the vehicle, usually deliberately misspelt. A few seconds of browsing tallies up Hed'n Off, Hinoz Best, Dangnangs Movan, Duzuz and Trotting Along.
Their owners shelter under awnings, with folding camp tables and chairs, the air thick with the same easy, if slightly corny, bonhomie that infests any old-school campground at peak season - gales of laughter, in-depth yarning, enthusiastic reunions all around. Affable old blokes abound. It's a comfortable scene.
But various association office-holders on hand for the big weekend make it clear that this is also big business. Motorhome owners spend $84 million a year while on the road, the national association's research has determined. Then there's the thriving industry involved in fitting out and maintaining the things.
The association has 19,000 members - at least three-quarters of all private motorhomes registered in the country. The growth in motorhome ownership is such that it expects the number to double over the next six years. The Nelson-Tasman association's membership accounts for 850 vehicles, and the convener of the Brightwater rally, Peter Gordon, says welcome letters to new members are being sent out at the rate of 10 to 15 a month.
The national association's president, Dick Waters, suggests a few reasons for the booming interest: baby boomers starting to touch retirement age, the loss of many traditional campgrounds to developers, a falling-off in the popularity of baches (whether through cost or a reluctance to be tied to a single holiday destination). There is also the increasing availability of the vehicles themselves, including buses imported from Japan for conversion into a mobile home.
It's not necessarily a rich man's game, but it's not for paupers either. While somebody suggests you might get a budget model for $30,000, Waters says you're not going to get away with much under $100,000. From there, the sky is the limit: there is a legend in these circles known as Goldfinger, a Christchurch-built mobile palace that boasts five televisions, a leather sofa, chandeliers, ceiling mirrors, two bedrooms and a built-in barbecue, all packed into 12.5 luxurious metres of converted bus, and recently offered for sale for $400,000.
That's the extreme, of course. But if you're spending as much time living in these things as the owners of the ones scattered about Teapot Valley say you'll want to, you're not going to want to scrimp unnecessarily on the creature comforts.
Mary and John Sowman, of Richmond and wherever else they feel like being, owned a big house on the slopes above the town for years, gradually developing a sprawling section. Then they asked themselves, for what?
For the past three years, they've called a tastefully converted bus home. Mostly, it's been parked up on a section in central Richmond where they've been slowly building a new, smaller home in readiness for their retirement - still a few years away - and hitting the road whenever the urge takes them.
With Sky TV, a permanently made-up bed (rather than a foldaway), comfortable sofas, solar-powered electricity supply, and most mod cons (a washing machine is the only basic appliance missing on board), it's easy to believe the Sowman's when they say they've had no real problem with the radical downsizing.
Any drawbacks quickly evaporate when the upside is built into the assessment: simply, the freedom from the usual ties of bricks and mortar, the realisation of how easy it is to end up ``spending your entire life ... working on a section and not just enjoying life'', as Mary Sowman puts it.
There are, it has to be acknowledged, those non-motorhome owners who regard them as a blight. The things are slow, after all. The law prescribes a speed limit of 90kmh, but you'd be lucky to be close to that if you're stuck behind one on any but the fastest stretches of highway, as they sway and wander and dawdle, and you can't see past them. Every motorhome owner knows it, and is, unsurprisingly, sensitive to the criticism, to varying degrees. They like to contrast the agitation they provoke to the tolerance given to trucks.
``There seems to be a mindset against motorhomes, '' says John Sowman. Peter Gordon chips in: ``It really comes back to envy, I believe ... resentment.'' A bumper sticker on the back of a van at Teapot Valley argues the point: ``I'm sorry we're so slow, but how fast is your house?''
The association has rules and guidelines to avoid causing undue stress to other motorists - don't travel in convoy, pull over when queues are forming, the usual commonsense stuff - but really, with the number of the things surging so dramatically, the only real remedy for other motorists may be in the nature of deep-breathing, counting to 10 and relaxing the grip on the wheel.
Anyway, it seems the motorhome association has a bigger PR consideration on its plate for now. The surge in small vans and people-movers being rented out to backpackers, big enough for a cramped sleep but not much more, has fed a corresponding surge in freedom camping - meaning tourists pulling up on an empty piece of roadside somewhere and using said roadside for lavatory duties, rubbish-dumping and the like.
Motorhome owners have found themselves unwittingly carrying the can, so to speak, for the resulting mess - ironically, when the level of fit-out in most of the things is considered. Waters, lamenting some of the messes his members have seen left trailing behind the freedom campers, vows: ``We would expel members of the association if they did that.''
Still, they know they are easy targets, so the association is pushing its ``self-containment'' message hard: there is a formal certification arrangement, to declare that an individual vehicle is properly equipped to deal with its occupants' waste.
But these political matters are really just a distraction from the real business at hand. Ken Sibly puts things back in perspective.
In mid-December, he and wife Lynne rented out their Christchurch home for a year and hit the road.
``We were going to go to the Gold Coast and retire over there, and Lynne said one day, `Why don't we buy a bus?', '' Sibly explains. So they did, spending about $75,000 getting themselves ready for a life on the road.
So far, they've wended their way very slowly north, their itinerary reading like a random delving through Wises Guide: Tai Tapu, Rangiora, Sefton, Balmoral, Hanmer, Kaikoura, Ward Beach, Blenheim, Canvastown, Nelson, Motueka, Howard Valley, Wangapeka, and many points in between. They are destined for the Wildfoods Festival this weekend, then Cromwell at Easter. After that, their only firm appointment is a promise to be in the Bay of Plenty for Christmas.
As a newcomer to the scene, Sibly hasn't been too bothered by the feeling that other road users may wish him and his bus ill when rushing up behind him on a slow stretch of road.
``People have just got to accept the fact that you are travelling along and your speed limit is 90kmh. Not that you want to go any faster than that. You want to watch the scenery as you go past. You don't want to be rushing places.''
Nelson Mail
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