THE WALLABY TRACK WITH LIONEL MUSSELL
ONE CLEVER CARAVANNER !
AN UNDER-FLOOR CARAVAN SHOWER – YOU ' VE GOT TO BE KIDDING !
When Tassie couple Brian and Christine Medcraft dropped by for a chat near the billabong at the Julia Creek RV Stay , I didn ' t believe what I was hearing . An under-floor shower ? What were they talking about ?
I soon found out . When I went across to their quite old pop-top , Brian showed me the shower . First he turned on the gas water heater outside the van . Then he opened the window and moved the table out of the way . A section of the floor was lifted up , revealing some shower curtaining , which he lifted out and raised to the ceiling , where a couple of hooks held it up .
Unzipping the curtain , he revealed where the water pipe came in : through the open window and hooked up to the shower head . All ready to shower ! Oh yes – there was a soap dish with soap in it , too .
Only one more thing to ask : where does the water go from the shower ? I might have known – it goes into a grey water tank for places like Julia Creek , where it is the rule that no grey water is allowed on the ground .
The Medcrafts do a lot of freecamping , so Brian has stopped water going to waste from the awning when it rains . It ' s channelled along the bottom of the awning , into a pipe , which leads it straight into the water tank !
A 12V ceiling fan really cools the van – is there no end to this man ’ s gadgets ? Of course , there ' s a diesel heater , but the diesel tank didn ' t please Brian – he made a stronger tank from heavy-duty piping and just puts a bit of diesel in when refuelling the tug .
The three-way fridge was something else that didn ' t please him , so he replaced that with a 12V portable unit that slides out from under the sink . A bread board also slides out .
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