Neal Cameron has never been too fussed about putting down roots, staying in one place and paying off a house. So 18 years ago, he decided to take a different route to home ownership.
Neal is a fairly adaptable guy, so he wasn’t stressed about the prospect of moving around. He decided to convert a bus as a way to experience the travelling lifestyle and not be tied down to a house or a mortgage.
Over the years, the bus has been parked in a few interesting places thanks to Neal’s work in the surfing industry. It’s been to Noosa, around the coast of NSW and Melbourne. Eventually, Neal plans to head up to Perth and the North West.
“When I [first] bought the bus, I could go down and park right on Bondi Beach for around three weeks and no one would bother me, but it’s different nowadays of course.”
The bus – which was converted by Neal and a mate – includes two bedrooms, a bathroom with a bath (that was converted from a sun lounger), solar panels, a kitchen, living room and even a deck on the roof.
This bus is the second conversion that Neal has completed. The first was an ex-government Leyland Leopard, but he wanted something a bit faster.
“So I started looking around for a coach and I found this one in Victoria. It was originally a Queensland coach and had spent some time in Western Australia.
“We cut the roof off and raised it up about half a metre. So now it’s got plenty of roof height and a nice flat floor.”
“We tried to make it as practical as possible and I wanted it to be made out of mostly recycled pieces; pretty much everything aside from the floorboards comes from somewhere else.”
The bus uses two water tanks, one for fresh drinking water and one that uses greywater. In the future, Neal says he’ll investigate a composting toilet.
Energy-wise, the solar electricity system was designed so it would last for two or three days and power everything Neal needed – including his beloved power tools.
The bus primarily runs on used vegetable oil – thanks to a 240L veggie tank – and diesel is used for starting and stopping the engine. Neal sources the oil from a number of takeaway shops and gathers it using an old converted beer keg with a centrifuge.
“I’ve found a strange sense of security knowing if everything went wrong I could just pack up and drive away,” says Neal.
“To me it’s home – it feels completely normal. When I go and stay at someone’s house it feels very strange. There’s so much wasted space that it doesn’t make sense to me anymore.”