Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some of the questions that we get asked a lot. 

Q: How long have we lived in the van?

A: We moved into our van January 2018 and we’ve loved living in it ever since.

Q: How long did the van conversion take?

A: Well, we did our conversion in between working multiple jobs each. So we spent roughly one year doing the conversion, but that was spending only a few hours a week actually working on the van, and usually in the dark…

Q: How much did we spend buying the van and how much did the conversion cost?

A: We paid just under A$20,000 buying the van then spent roughly A$6,500 converting it into our off-grid home. We saved a lot of money by doing everything ourselves, and nope, we don’t have a trade background.

Q: How do we earn money while living in the van?

A: Originally we thought working online while travelling would be the best way to earn money, but after 4-months of doing contract graphic design work we found that the stress of deadlines, urgent jobs, and troubles getting relevant supporting content was taking away from our experience of travelling. So now we’ll travel until we run low of funds then find whatever work we can and stay in that area until either the work dries up or we have enough money.

Q: How do we find our travel destinations?

A: We use a combination of platforms to find our stop-offs for sightseeing and touristy kind of stuff, we mainly use Instagram, google, google maps plus tourism books, brochures and word-of-mouth from local information centres.

Q: Do we free camp, stealth camp or pay for caravan parks/accommodation?

A: We aim to free camp as much as possible, we’d say at least 80% off the places we stay free camps, 15% would be low cost/donation sites, 4% stealth camp and 1% caravan parks or similar. We’d rather spend money on experiences than a parking spot for a night.

Q: How do we find our campsites each night?

A: One word, WIKICAMPS! Wikicamps is our number 1 app for finding campsites, bathroom facilities, drinking water and pretty much everything else we need. (not an ad for Wikicamps, we really do use it almost every day)

Q: Do we have a toilet/shower in the van?

A: Whilst we don’t have a toilet/shower built into our van, we do carry a portable chemical toilet and portable heated shower with us. We very rarely actually use them as there are generally public facilities nearby. If we’re in the middle of nowhere or we’re setting up somewhere for a week or so we’ll set up our ensuite tent with the toilet and shower inside. More info about our bathroom here.

If you’ve got a question for us use the “contact us” page to send us an email.