ExplorOz Podcast: Australian Overland Adventures and Mapping
Welcome to the ExplorOz Podcast: Australian Overland Adventures and Mapping. Michelle and David, the founders of ExplorOz and the developers of Australia's best offline mapset available in the ExplorOz Traveller app will take you on adventures and beyond. Tune in to hear how offline maps are made, and go on a virtual journey with the mapping survey team to hear how they find exciting new places and how they balance work, and holidays. You'll get expert advice, and insider tips on what's involved in long term travel including all the tech stuff, and featured locations that are being added and verified in the app content. You'll hear about the ExplorOz Team's adventures 4WDing, camping, hiking, and more across Australia, from Aussie national parks to the beaches West to East, the rainforests, gorges and islands. Fuel your passion for overlanding whether you're a camper, caravanner or motorhomer, and ignite plans for your next trip or tune in whilst you're on the road. Subscribe and never miss a new episode.
ExplorOz Podcast: Australian Overland Adventures and Mapping
Creativity on Wheels: Living in a Bus with Leon and Matt
Who says your home has to be tied down by a physical address? Instead, why can't it move with you? This unique concept of living and working becomes a reality for Leon and Matt having completed their creative bus build. This creative duo breathes life into and transforms a C-Class bus into a mobile living space that doesn't simply serve as a dwelling but also mirrors their values and aspirations.
In this episode, we'll venture into the thrilling details of their journey - from finding the perfect bus through the highs and lows of renovation to finally realising their dream home that's as much a testament to their creativity as it is to their determination. Our conversation takes a fascinating direction as Leon and Matt pull back the curtains on the logistics of living in a bus, financial considerations, and an overall peek into their life on the road.
Matt and Leon share how they strive to utilise their bus as a platform to share their creativity, inspire others, and make a positive impact on the world. From plans of running their own business and attending music festivals to providing an immersive art experience and aiding indigenous communities, this episode is a fun deep dive and exploration of non-traditional living and a testament to the spirit of forging your own path. Buckle up and join us for an inspiring ride into the travelling lives of Leon and Matt.
Follow Leon and Matt on their adventures:
Leon: https://www.instagram.com/wanderous_/
Matt: https://www.instagram.com/matte0j/
Today's episode is going to take on something different, as we welcome our first guest travellers to our podcast series. So with me I've got Matt and Leon and their large dog, terrence. We're sitting outside their home, which is this bus.
Speaker 1:Thank you Well, yes these guys are in their early 20s. Their story is something that not all of you may aspire to, but we'll certainly know some family members or friends that may be in a similar situation, such as struggling to find a place to live. My understanding is that Matt and Leon consciously seek the work-life balance that is less reliant on capitalism and consumer culture that serves our modern lifestyles. Yet, as expected, this comes with significant challenges of maintaining the basic requirements of life, such as keeping a roof over your head and having funds to eat and use transport.
Speaker 1:So, welcome Matt and Leon to the Explorers podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having us.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having us here.
Speaker 3:It's been awesome being able to listen to the progress of your podcast so far and just get to the point where you get to interview travellers, and we're actually really blessed to be your first interviewer. Because there's so many people that you know out there who are doing so many wonderful journeys, incredible adventures, yeah, and there are like amazing stories and we're really proud to be able to share our first story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was excellent having you on the channel. So let's start with where you're at today and then let's take a few steps and we'll go back through the journey. Basically, you guys left the idea of rental housing as this became problematic with the dog, and instead you've bought a bus, which is what we have here today. It's in mint condition and anyone would be very envious of the fit-out you've got. It's got sink and fridge and you've got everything in there. You're cooktop, your bed, the desk, the solar power, the inverter. But that's not how you bought it and you've built this over the past year. So before we talk about the bus itself, let's get to know each of you. If you wouldn't mind, I've got a few notes to share. Leon, you say you're an artist focusing on jewellery and photography and performance art. After finishing school, you started uni and design, but then heard the call of travel overseas and you got caught up in COVID. So that didn't work out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't actually get to leave for my trip. I had everything planned and booked and backpack bought. But yeah, it was on to pack in the backpack and everything, everything took some steps backwards.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that. There were challenging times. You then bought a camper van and decked that out and was able to travel. Because you're in WA, you are able to still access the broad experience of WA and the Northern Territory, and you travelled for six months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, six months. It was an indefinite in definite trip in the van and I love building the van and it was fit out perfect for me and it was before the dog and before Matt and was travelling around in that.
Speaker 1:And that was when the COVID restrictions were quite tight. So whilst you could move around WA and NT in South Australia confidently, it didn't seem plausible about going further east, did it?
Speaker 2:And it just didn't seem worth it, like there's so much to explore on the west side and the north side and, yeah, just doing a half lap didn't stress about trying to do a full lap. There's so much to see. Like, just take it at your own pace.
Speaker 1:I believe you were keen on heading to WA, though, and possibly working over there, but you were getting enough work and not happy about being away from Matt for so long, so you did come home to WA after the six months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I met Matt like as I was finishing the build of the camper van and it was prepared to do solo travelling for a while and Matt was still working and had other commitments. But you got to fly up to Broome for your 21st and we did like three weeks through the Kimberley into Darwin around what like 2021 or 2021, and that was so that's when you returned back roughly, wasn't it from that six months, so that was like right in the middle of that six month trip when you got to come up we travelled for that.
Speaker 2:And then I had some, had some travelling I wanted to do by myself, but, yeah, just realised that there was no point in going further, because I actually wanted to go back and travel with you more.
Speaker 1:And when you got back you worked as a photographer and you and Matt have been working as tour guides in the Perth CBD area as pedal riders on rickshaws. Yeah, that's pretty fun sounding.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a really great opportunity to sort of get to show off our city, which you know growing up in. I think in any city you sort of come off with the impression that you're there's so much more outside of your city and through this job we got to really know our city, not just how to navigate around our city, but also like yeah, I know it's history and engage with the people. Excellent experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah what actually goes on and how, yeah, how you can, yeah, be a part of that.
Speaker 3:Excellent, I actually met with you on through pedal, through that job right.
Speaker 1:So, matt, on to you my notes here. You're a performing artist and a disability support worker. After finishing school, you started uni doing stage production and performing arts, but you found your niche with the support work.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You've worked with an agency that had a small group of clients and the different support workers would be rusted on to spend time individually with a client for a few hours. That could be a day of fun or exposure, or going to a session that was booked by the carer, or staying at the head office doing activities. Some of your clients are wheelchair bound, some are non-verbal. It says here none of them required aged care. Your clients are mostly people that are born with conditions such as cerebral palsy, autism.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but also like our, like clients who might have, like our, mental health issues because of their disability. Oh, of course, disabling mental health issues because of traumatic incidents as well, so not all the time because like our from birth, but, yeah, just a broad range of people. I like working with kids, but I tend to just work with anyone in the area who might need help.
Speaker 1:The world needs people like you. I know you talk about your clients a lot and I know working in support's really resonated with you on a deeper level. It's very rewarding.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and not just rewarding. Like I got into support work because I didn't really enjoy where Theodore was taking me in terms of how I was understanding working with people. Like I really enjoyed Theodore because it's a platform to explore human connection and the way that you connect or the way that I was connecting at uni with other people wasn't really helping where I was going with my Theodore and so I had heard from a bunch of other people about support work and how, like oh, you'd really suit support work. I never really understood it, you know. Like that wasn't something that was taught at school, like it was nursing or doctors and that's it. That's healthcare.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very much so.
Speaker 3:So it's been a really awesome job, and the agency that I was working for really helped me work straight off the bat with a range of people with disabilities. I didn't get to nitpick. I only want to work with this sort of disability, or only intellectual disabilities, or I don't want to do this, don't want to do that, you just go and you're. It's a really flexible and adaptable job and that's that's like the sort of person that I am.
Speaker 1:So one of the reasons that I wanted to cover some of your background there before we get into the story about the bus is because people listening are probably going to wonder where's this connection going to come from. So what I want people to know is just that little intro about you, to understand what makes you tick and what you've done before, because this is going to come into the whole story we've got today to share. What I want to talk about with you both now in this episode is how you came to be living in the bus that's here in front of us today and how this will serve your life goals in the future. I'm aware the bus has been quite a huge part of your lives for the last 12 months since you bought it, and neither of you have actually been able to fit in much work, which has been quite stressful. A bit of a chicken and an egg scenario, wouldn't you say?
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:So what I'd like you to tell our listeners is when did you get the bus and, more importantly, why did you get the bus? Then we can talk about the bus itself as a whole. Reason we chose this topic today is the buses actually been sitting on our front yard here for the past year, and if anyone has looked at our YouTube channel, you'll see a couple of shorts showing what this bus looked like when you first got it, and looking at it here today, it's a completely different beast. So obviously, we'll end up discussing the whole story about the process of turning this bus into your home over those past 12 months, but we'd also like to hear what bus life is going to be about, because you're just about on that pinnacle of making that brave step. The bus is running.
Speaker 1:You've done a few shakedown trips, but we want to hear about why you've chosen this lifestyle and how that aligns with your values. So to kick it off, matt, we're gonna start with you. Tell us about the bus and where the idea for the bus came from.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I think like one of the biggest things I've learned from this is that when people say that they've got a busload of work to do, they really don't know what a busload of work is, until you're to your work in day to day, to day to day and watching your family work day to day to day for like together, for our dream. So it's been such a big journey, a humbling journey.
Speaker 3:Big journey and for me, like I'm not as mechanically equipped as Leon and his family and in that, like I was devoting a lot of my time to working so that we could pay off. We could pay off the bus and um, not, that's just like who I am as a person, like I can. I think it's also who you are as a person, like we would just sort of Commit to something and really devote all of our love and passion to it and then and it in sort of the grand scheme of our shared dream and on.
Speaker 3:It's just taken so long to get there and Even before we had that shared dream, there was always this call to go traveling. For me, like even before we were together and I would always. I took trips in different types of vans with friends and like my own Vehicle. But it wasn't until I was able to travel with Leon that I actually got to really Understand and embody the off road, the off-grid, off-road sort of living and and being self-sustainable.
Speaker 1:So you have some different experiences already prior to this bus doing some camping.
Speaker 2:Tell us a little bit about that well, yeah, when, when you were working as much as as Matt does, you're only, you're only, you know, take a few weeks out of the year to, to give yourself that time to like really just like immerse yourself in nature and like being that holiday. But like like mindset, and when it it must be hard to like get into that holiday mindset. If it's only for a short time, well, you're not like in something super long, long term. That's why I love like the idea of motorhomes, because you can really like find that balance between work and life and like what you, yeah how you had where you want to go from that. And it was probably this time last year that we decided to get the bus. It was after we did a short, like two-week trip in your time off Up to Xmouth. We had traveled in the van a fair bit At that point and so no one knows about the van.
Speaker 1:Oh so now we're talking about van. This is the van that you, we met, we met in. Yeah right.
Speaker 2:So we just so I finished the build on the van and we meet and through through that trail pedal path job and.
Speaker 3:That was. That was coming up to three years ago now, so that was in 2020 he won that we like sort of met and and also went traveling together and we had seen each other around and and at that point I think Leon had just gotten his van- I was still working to get my license at that point.
Speaker 1:So what model that? What make a model van have you got?
Speaker 2:So that is a Kia pre-geo 2005. It's a diesel, it's a manual. It like yeah, it got me to the point where I could have a driver's license and Traveled around with another mate of mine and his motorbike.
Speaker 1:And you've got that all fitted out with a bed. And what? How was that set up? Yeah?
Speaker 2:so when when we bought that, it was empty, it was an old electricians van and and the, we kitted that out with, yeah, just like a 160 watt panel and and a 15 watt invert, 15k what inverter? It's got one, a GM deep cycle battery and this is a guy. It's got a 22 liter like fridge freezer.
Speaker 3:It's got a couch that converts into a bed, that converts back into a couch really easily, and underneath that couch is Like heaps of storage. There's like heaps of mini little spots of storage that are really conveniently Hidden and are and like everything is really ergonomically designed but you didn't buy it that way, Did you?
Speaker 2:you built that yeah obviously with with dad over there behind the camera. Mr David Martin, mr Explorer's brain yeah, none of this is possible without him, and and yeah, I owe a lot of what I know and what I drive to to him but one of the limitations that you guys had with that van I was really when yeah came, when we got the dog really. So we loved traveling in that and at the time we were just taking it on shorter trips, weekend trips, one week to two weeks maximum, and it was.
Speaker 3:It was really fun for that, but knowing that we wanted to do this like more long term, yeah, because, because at that point we were sort of really Overtly aware that we were just traveling to escape the rat race. To come back to the rat race, yeah, and plan to escape, go again, and this endless sort of perpetuation of working and and we realized that the van is is really good for one person.
Speaker 3:And then we got good for two people and we ended up getting the dog you got the dog as well, and it just is big as another person.
Speaker 2:And because we treat him like you know. We give him the space that he deserves and Don't all dogs come on, lots of traveling lovers out there.
Speaker 1:I'm sure this thing that totally get that we actually initially got Terrence.
Speaker 3:Well, like firstly, out of the devotion and love for our relationship, because we just realized that that's what our relationship has been calling, and it was a year after we had been together and we just kept on seeing dogs and we ended up getting him. It was also after a few haunting and harrowing weeks of living in a rental where we Home insecurity had a robbery, and then a few weeks later we had a break in and assault happen.
Speaker 1:And, and so, and, and it was.
Speaker 3:It was a real violation of everyone and on, yes, so unexpected and and I got security cameras and it didn't, it wasn't you know anything. And so the dog has been the best sort of exception to that rule of Living on your own, you know, and he's such a beautiful, gentle dog with, with a bit of a like you don't want to mess with me energy, look about him. But when we brought him back to our roommate Didn't tell them that we were buying a dog, because it was like, hey, like this just needs to happen. It's happening. What's the? What's the phrase? It's like you're.
Speaker 2:You asked for forgiveness, not for permission.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we did so we did so.
Speaker 2:We had that experience and then like, yeah, like through that Was requiring a new place to live.
Speaker 3:So we we ended up finding another place with another group of friends and their other Dog and they got on really well for like a good, good amount of time a good amount of time, a few months, and they ended up going on some trips and traveling and, like Terence, still being like fairly New to us in our, in our situation, he was like yeah, there was just some dogs just sort of just got a bit jealous of how to understand and regulate each other's emotions and and there was a few attack incidences where where the the result was for us to move on again. And so we're in this sort of just phase of like, oh my god, as I'm sure so many people would be, because you know about couples, like wanting dogs in rentals or having to move out of rentals.
Speaker 2:And Even when we adopted Terence, we were asked like, really rigorously like like do you live in a rental? And what would happen?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can't live in there anymore and we basically like straight up said, like that's not gonna happen. Like we want this dog more than we want to live in a rental anyway. Like, yeah, we'll make a vehicle work for us and yeah, being being in, yeah, being where we are was really ideal for that. I actually did look at adopting a dog when I was traveling in the Northern Territory and I was gonna look after another traveler's dog for a few days because he wanted to explore a national park and I wanted to see how a dog would be in the van and just like if I would enjoy having a dog around his company. And and we didn't even need to go through that for me to realize that, like traveling with a dog it's just something I wanted to do, and like realizing that traveling overseas Just wasn't ideal or ethical or in my like timeframe for now like yeah.
Speaker 1:Lots of really compelling reasons and issues as to how you got to this point. So let's move on to how do you think the bus life will change the way you live and how will it help you reach your goals, and what is the plan? Because that's what we're here to hear about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, we mostly want to like yeah, enable ourselves to to, to to live to our full potential life. I feel like we have a lot to to, to continue to learn as we travel from the connections you make and the incredible people out there, and also a lot to like create and provide and and be inspired by.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think there's Like working in a city. There's always this struggle to like work alongside doing your art and um, and where we've reached a point where All that we want to do with our lives is to vote Our work ethic, our life, to making art and to being like self sustainable and then self-sufficient on the road, and We've now got a very self-sufficient off-grid vehicle, but Everyone always says, once you say that you're going to be traveling for like an unreturned date or for multiple years. Oh so so how are you gonna like? Are you gonna?
Speaker 2:How are you gonna work? How are you gonna make money?
Speaker 3:There is the opportunity to work at farms and to work at bars and last wet open to doing that. We're more looking at just fully enabling the independence of our like professional lives in like Lou, of our personal, our creative freedoms right.
Speaker 1:So this is really interesting because this subject about traveling long term and how do you fund it the reality of that Is the thing that scares a lot of people and what you've just said is true.
Speaker 1:So, but it's interesting because I've spoken to you before about this and I've heard you talk to other people. You're not out there Saying we are going traveling or we're going on a holiday. This is a lifestyle and it's not, and it's also not necessarily a destination, and you're not saying, oh, we're going to go the here, here, here, here and here. What you're seen to be saying is that you're just going to try and use your new home as a way to enable a, a different way of living and a different way of working and you will let that evolve as it happens. And obviously, you're here in Perth now and you've got networks and contacts and you've been working on trying to make that Separation from what you have been doing because obviously, matt, with your disability work, you're working through an agency, so they employed you and you went to a workplace, so you've separated from that and, leon, you were working with Photography and you've had to separate again from the employer employee.
Speaker 2:There's an L relationship. Yeah, I think there's an element of like wanting to work for yourself but then also like having, like, your own ethical battles within doing that. Yeah and yeah, building these. But building this boss has been like, yeah, super knowledgeable for me in that aspect of like. Like we do need, like we're both pretty into our environmentalism and our Environmental activism in in certain aspects. But, um, yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of like personal, ethical Almost dilemmas that go on when you're, like you know, needing parts and tools and oil and just like equipment and also wanting to Create more of that to share it's. It's.
Speaker 3:It's super interesting and I learn a lot from from you guys doing explorers on on how how it can be done and, and especially because of that connection with explorers, and, and, and, and how your parents have have sort of created and inhabited their personal Creative freedoms into their own professional business is like what is like a super big drive for you and and it's, it's really amazing.
Speaker 1:Sorry, made life hard for you, so so growing up.
Speaker 2:So growing up, you like yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm used to do what you've got to say. I was gonna say well growing up.
Speaker 2:You make, you make some, you make some people who can travel the cunt, travel full time with like Just gold nuggets in their pocket that they've picked up on the side of the road. And then you meet other people who are traveling in in their massive rigs that they've, you know, physically dug the country to to drive in, and there's an element of like that needing to happen, but also like showing that there are other ways of moving through the world and and also like that there are other people out there to support you doing that, you to do that and for you to support them on and and when, like I've left my agency and I've like left a few of the few of the people who I was once working with on, there was sort of this fear that maybe I won't be able to.
Speaker 3:You know that they'll lose the create like the work that I've done with them. But but like there's also now this drive towards like sharing the work that I'm doing with people with other people out there, whether in indigenous communities or rural towns and and even outside of disability, disability support work, like working with like performance companies and and Different sorts of and even just basking, like when you need to just get from one place to the next, like Everyone loves to be entertained and like why not be entertained by another person?
Speaker 1:What's your entertainment trick?
Speaker 2:Well, people love fire twirling and I love fire twirling and there's actually like I get.
Speaker 2:I get a bit like nervous and people Like, oh, can you like show off some? Like I mean, yeah for sure. But like I got to get myself in the zone first, I'm like always excited to like push myself in those sort of aspects and boundaries and yeah, just just creating that little environment for people to dance. And I remember working in the van. I worked in the Northern Territory for a bit at a fairly remote shout out to pink Panther pub In Laramore. I worked there for a while and that was just like we had such a diverse group of our Contractors come in to to work on the space and working with them was super rewarding and gained a lot of experience and just shared a lot of you know, travel II, travel II knowledge and ended up playing didgeridoo and bongo drums with them every night.
Speaker 1:Was super fun and I think one of the stories from that Location is you were helping build a crocodile enclosure for a massive, big saltwater crocodile. Is that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think salty Sam is his name. It's pretty old croc and and, yeah, he had lived in this one pen. So there was two pens with the salty Sam and there was I forget the freshwater Crocodiles name, but they built the contractors that came, we built another pen for the freshie near the pool, so they got to move him and then salty Sam got to hop on over to the other side while his Pool was cleaned out and I actually shoveled his probably three to five years worth of Crocodile waste over the fence and and then, yeah, later that week, the boys made a new fence and there was a very, very close Cole with a crocodile. He was.
Speaker 1:He launched at the boys, basically so putting in the new so northern territory, crocodile tradesmen I can imagine that we're pretty, pretty intense down time that you had to play and entertain and do fire twirling and chats around the campfire, I can imagine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you learn to drink somewhere as an Australian, I guess and For it's golden the northern territory.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, boys, I'd like to ask now a bit more about how the bus is going to help you reach the goals. What's the plan?
Speaker 3:So obviously we've just sort of detailed a bit about what we do, who we are like, like Leon, on Leon's like, creates jewelry and does this flow I do yet takes photos. I do music, theater. So we want to be able to Provide our, our creatives, like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:To to the world and and we also want to diversify what we have to create for the range of people who want to consume what we have to create, and so a lot of that, like including with support work, like we, we do want to, like go to rural schools and be able to what we've learned, like in the education sector, but then also if we get the chance to work with indigenous communities, families, then then we will. Yeah, yeah, we'll have that opportunity.
Speaker 3:I'm sure your skills would be very much desired in environments and and I, like I personally have a lot of like inspiration for the indigenous cultures and to work with them and to To sort of share the space to like knowledge make with them, I think would be really and and story tell with them especially would be such a raw and Beautiful opportunity, wow. But, like on top of that, what we're doing right now, like in the city where we're doing immersive art, music installations and One of the guys that we're working with wants to like go traveling- he's got knowledge of touring and tours all week, yeah, I want to, like do more of a busking tour.
Speaker 3:It's gonna be interesting and so there's there's this um, this idea to do like sort of like traveling circus tour on and on top of that, what? What we are working on right now is working towards a business rebranding sort of partnership.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can offer to people and businesses which incorporates like running their social media, anything and developing them.
Speaker 3:A website.
Speaker 2:Or it could be even just repainting the sign at the caravan park. Yeah, like anything for rebranding.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so so just on photo lab able to promote that and advertise that and just Hone in on those different creative like endeavors as well as, like, yeah, other endeavors that we're working on because we're really into the music scene as well. So so that means that we'll be attending like a lot of different music festivals eventually, um, down the east coast and and offering out and in.
Speaker 3:What we've been able to do with going to music festivals in the bus Is like be able to sort of create a space like a chill space and immersive Art space for people to come to and make art in. On because we've got a blackboard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just see the art that's in there, like yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a whole art piece in itself and a lot of people Will gain a lot of inspiration and respect for we might have to do a walkthrough on one of our upcoming.
Speaker 1:YouTube oh, we might do a whole.
Speaker 2:Spotify. You can watch this on. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:So obviously, this bus then becomes a lot more than what a lot of people have with their caravans and motorhomes. It's actually their, their transport, and they're going from place to place and exploring destinations, but your motorhome that you set up your bus here is actually going to be your workspace the vessel of creative transmutation.
Speaker 1:The TARDIS by the sounds of it. So that's really really interesting insight, because it's not just we're going traveling and that's what it's about. It's really embodying. How can you sustain yourselves working and living From a motorhome, from a mobile vehicle? So you're leaving the rental Situation, yeah, taking your dog with you, and you're going to have some challenges. People that have attempted to do some of these things before, but you're young and you're motivated, so I can't wait to follow you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and there was. There was this like rule, moment of like, maybe like two to four weeks of Looking at other buses before we got this one and we definitely knew that we wanted the Toyota co-star sort of look Because we couldn't afford, you know, like a double-decker or one of the or even buying or yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was really tempting, but obviously like that much more work and also getting new licenses and and like yeah.
Speaker 3:So this is a C-Class bus which means that you don't need an additional or extra or license or anything like this.
Speaker 1:Has a C-Class license, so that means that anyone with a regular driver's license can drive this bus. And what length is it?
Speaker 2:That's good to notice. That would be a good thing to know. We just attached the back, the back box, on the towbar, so it's now longer than a car parking.
Speaker 1:I think on the YouTube, the way we've set this up, you can just see the back box and the bikes on the back.
Speaker 2:Can you get to know?
Speaker 1:okay, anyway, so it's a bit over powerful.
Speaker 2:So it's longer than your car parking space, but if you think like in a safety sprinter, it's probably. I couldn't tell you a length right now.
Speaker 1:Right, right. Well, we better add that to your list.
Speaker 2:I better know that before I go to a car park.
Speaker 1:If I go to a car park, All right, so tell me a little bit about how then you chose this particular one, because it's not a coaster. That you told me it's not a coaster, and yeah we were looking for a coaster because obviously they're.
Speaker 2:They're the one you know. It's where the coaster is Got the name well known.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's plenty of them out there still kicking around and there is probably Not many of these still kicking around. So finding finding this little gem that we did in the state that we did was, for the price, that we did was, was definitely a journey. He was actually down in Albany. So so this, the workshop we built him at, is, you know, north of the river northern suburbs and we were trolling through marketplace looking at different buses. After we we were in Xmouth and we decided the boss was going to be the next week. We knew, kind of we knew we wanted to go to Xmouth and I was ready to do any Kind of rig.
Speaker 2:That wasn't the van. I'd done a lot of traveling in the van. At that point I was almost ready to go back to swag camping. That's what I grew up doing with you, lovely folk, and and I so, yeah, I was really keen for like swag camping. Just getting back to that, the real basics again. And you were driving a super forest at the time and it was pretty, it was fairly well-kitted, it had a really nice like a really big bull bar and awning roof rack.
Speaker 2:Solar panel even had a dual battery system in it.
Speaker 3:We bought it like that you don't see many set up that way, I must admit yeah going from a van to a to a Subaru was was unknown, yeah, just not as liveable, because the whole idea was that it would force us to like be outside more, but also just like confines every anytime that you're inside the the car because you've got all of your of your stuff like packed inside on, and so so Leon bought the van, bought the bus in Albany, and so Mazda T3000 and it's from 1983.
Speaker 1:That means it today, 1983?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's pretty old, pretty old boy and yeah, so, so we could, we test driven a few around Perth like coasters and I think we tried like driven some of the 35 there's a T35 thousand as well and just different engine sizes. And yeah, we test drove a few and the fitouts, the ones that were in our budget, the fitouts were just not what we wanted to live in and Like same same when I chose the van, there was just like Nothing about someone else's build that I wanted to live in yeah and when there was, it was then, you know, then there was mechanical issues with the vehicle.
Speaker 2:So so we found we see, the ones we test drove in Perth were just two out of our budget for what we were getting. And when we found this in Albany, the ad read so well and she was very confident in his mechanics and had a check door, roof, you tires, before listing it for sale and she was selling it with all the accessories that were in it. That just seemed like a great place to start. For what?
Speaker 3:we wanted. So it wasn't a shell, it wasn't like like it didn't have seats in it, it was already ready to go. It was a converted like boss.
Speaker 1:It had done a few laps.
Speaker 2:It had done a few families. It had done more conversions than the ones that it had been in there. Yeah, yeah, and um like, um she had traveled in it with her three tape age kids and herself.
Speaker 3:And Loved her. So people and the bed was huge so you could fit more people. Then there was storage space everywhere, but with minimal Storage and um and there were holes everywhere.
Speaker 1:That's the main part of the story is that there was grass everywhere.
Speaker 2:So the way that we bought it, we could have bought it and traveled in it and probably, you know, gotten halfway around or three years into a trip and then had to Urgently think of something else because it just would have been falling away as we were driving.
Speaker 1:Falling away from. Rust Honestly if do yourself a favor and jump on the YouTube channel and explore ours and go to the.
Speaker 2:Benji shorts and you can see a quick little See how much thrust there was. Oh, and people show me their bands now and they're like, oh my gosh, I need to fix this hole. It's like me or you go to.
Speaker 3:Wanderis underscore on Instagram, where Leon has uploaded all of the bus progress. And so we should go there, but we'll update that later.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. We'll definitely make sure the little Um listeners can have a look at those accounts for sure. So we'll make that clear.
Speaker 3:So it was last year around this time, which was October or November, that Leon and his dad drove down to Albany to look at this.
Speaker 2:Bus, just to look at it, because the ad read so well and it would have been, it would have been a six-hour drive One way just to look.
Speaker 3:Yeah, six hours is from. Is from Perth to Albany.
Speaker 1:Albany in WA, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the ad read too well and we were to communicating too well not to make the journey to see it right and then we get there and dad's scratch in his head and he's like oh my gosh, what are you about to do to me? And I'm like well, you're not telling me that we can't do this, so let's do it.
Speaker 1:So did you know at the time that it needed any other work?
Speaker 2:We knew we were gonna start it, I mean a year's worth of work is what it's taken.
Speaker 1:Was that part of the original plan and it was like a full-on year, like a full-on year.
Speaker 2:So no, it was not part of the original plan. The plan was to have a rig and travel within like three to four to five months of working on it. And we saw the rust that was in the first part and we thought that was super scary and it's gonna be the hardest part of the thing, and we brought it back to Perth.
Speaker 2:Somehow. We had a night. We bought it first and had to survive that night. What have we just done? What have we just got ourselves into? And, yeah, brought it back to the workshop.
Speaker 1:So it drove, no problem, all the way back from this takes our drive from Albany to Perth.
Speaker 2:That's not an easy drive the hardest part was, I think, dad dealing with the lean and the racing seats that were in it. It had racing seats in the front. Racing seats yeah, like some sedan seats or some more car seats. They weren't bus seats or van seats or anything comfortable.
Speaker 1:All right. So you've got this van that moves. It works. It's the model you wanted. It looks good. It's got a conversion.
Speaker 2:So some of the hard stuff's already been done, yeah.
Speaker 1:But you're telling me about the rust. You obviously thought when you inspected it that it was doable, so talk to me about and let everyone know what then transpired. The first thing that you tackled was what.
Speaker 2:So when we saw it, it had everything that we wanted. It was going to be the perfect starting base, and just how much we had to take back when it was unknown to us. Really, it was just the one to start on. And sorry, where were we? Where did we start?
Speaker 3:Yeah, because it was a bit of a long process of like are we just going to keep the kitchen as it is? Are we just going to keep this?
Speaker 2:And it sort of ended up like why would we just fucking rip?
Speaker 3:everything out. And you know what you get? A swear word.
Speaker 2:I wish you could see Dud's face behind the camera. No, it's all going as long as you don't put in the closed caption.
Speaker 1:That's all right, yeah.
Speaker 3:So yeah, it turned out.
Speaker 2:No, maybe halfway through we brought it back and within the first 24 hours we were like angle, cutting the main pillars of the door frame out and just putting major holes in the floor Because one of the doors didn't shut.
Speaker 1:Is that what the issue was?
Speaker 2:The passenger door was hanging on with no joke. One bolt and like half a thread.
Speaker 1:So my recollection of this that you told me was that the owner had disclosed there was a problem with this door.
Speaker 2:And she had said she had sent me photos of all these rust spots around the vehicle and yeah, they were all like surface rusty and you know, maybe a little hole or something. And then when we got there and we saw the hole in the floor, it was like a full on hole in the floor and the door was like fully rusted. You know that when the water travels down the floor frame, yeah, the gutters were all crumbled away. There was no gutters you could poke holes in it at different parts. But we didn't really see the depth of that when we bought it and even like when we bought it to the workshop the first few days, it just kept getting worse.
Speaker 3:And even beyond that, like with any second hand conversion that you buy, like if it's not completely redone from the inside out, like Leon's just done with his van, like you really don't know how many years worth of rot might be laying for you.
Speaker 3:In this case, it was 40 years worth, and so when we removed the bed, of rusting, just people siliconeing it back in or painting it when we removed the bed like the mattress we saw, like the frame which was really poorly put so that you can only access the spare wheel under the entire back part, like storage capacity Only you could grab the spare wheel underneath the bed and you couldn't access any of the spare space. All down the sides and around the frame was just like mold and the rot.
Speaker 3:Wet carpet, wet wood, like floor, just like that. And so, whether you changed the mattress or changed the something was going to be left with rot and it just worked out to just the recovery.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds a lot like home renovation you start pulling up one thing, and then it leads to another revelation of something that yet has to be gutted. And that's basically what you ended up doing a complete gutting of the entire internal and re-manufacturing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's what we treated it like, like our first home build.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some young people that's at your age. That's exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 2:Some people work for it, some people build it, or whatever.
Speaker 3:So, very fortunate, there's been maybe I don't want to offend anyone here there's been maybe three to five instances where we've gotten no, three instances where we've gotten someone else to try and do something else for us. That includes the awning, the servicing and something else, I'm sure. But every time that we've given the bust to someone else to look at or do or work on, like nothing, like nothing was given back to us, like nothing was worked on no progress.
Speaker 2:It was too scary.
Speaker 3:They didn't want to. It was too scary. Their phone fell in the pool, and so they couldn't work.
Speaker 1:That's what a tradesman told you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, after he told him he needed to look for parts of the birthday.
Speaker 3:It was just a bit ridiculous and I've come from a family which is very much just if there's a problem with your car, take it in and get it serviced and I've really come to understand that most times taking it in service, you come back with more problems.
Speaker 3:And so it's been a really awesome and rare opportunity for me to witness the entire destruction and reconstruction of this vehicle from like every aspect of it. Like I was, knowing that I was going to be more handy on the design part and the aesthetic nature and function of it, but still learning from David and Leon about the electronics, the electrics, how it all works and connects, how what we're doing is making ourselves sufficient, how it ergonomically fits in the space to then reach every other part of the space where all of our plugins are going to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've had lots of questions along the design phase. I recall this where you were being asked to make decisions about the positioning of where do you want this plug, where do you want that? And it was before you were really quite ready to understand how important some of that would be in the lifestyle because you hadn't actually lived in it yet, yeah, but with the time that you've invested into it, looking back, what a journey.
Speaker 2:It's still very fresh to look back on.
Speaker 1:You see a photo of the old paintwork and it's like well it used to be this vehicle within a year as well, because it's not only been a complete gutting and floor Shazzy was re-strengthened, or the floor frame, yeah well, we put new floor boards in new insulation.
Speaker 2:All we insulated it. There was just foam sheets in there. Before we rebuilt the entire dashboard, we rewired the whole really electrical system of it. Building the dashboard was very fun, new experience. Positioning mirrors like we found the coolest mirrors for, like you know, the best online price and obviously they are the hardest, most important thing, most annoying thing to get right. And they're just the most important thing, which you don't realise until you try and find a new mirror, and what about driving it?
Speaker 1:Having gone from a much smaller vehicle, you've never driven a bus and whilst it's, still on your C license. How drivable do you find it?
Speaker 2:I love it. Personally, I honestly find the smaller cars really hard to manoeuvre and I love driving the van and you're very close to the front. You don't really have the bonnet and I guess I'm shorter. You drive the bus so well. You drive it better than me, honestly.
Speaker 3:I drive the bus with a bit more respect, I think, for the bus. I think you drive it with, like I'd built this. I'm in the bus.
Speaker 1:Oh, the truth is coming out now.
Speaker 3:I'm a bit more humbly, small in the bus, which makes it sort of wet and it's good.
Speaker 1:This is great.
Speaker 3:I've driven the van for quite a while as well.
Speaker 1:You've worked for it. I know I've had a mover in the van as well.
Speaker 3:And you can't help. But I can't help in a car I think it's the way my brain works is just to feel like you're going fast and then you just end up looking down and going like 120 and you're like, oh, how'd that happen? You slow down and then get caught up with it or use cruise control and then you just don't look up to your car and you see what you guys.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's your story. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've got a story.
Speaker 2:And a lot of people are aged come on.
Speaker 3:Like getting the chance to drive slow and to just not need to worry about speed or going anywhere, or Are you saying it's not a very fast vehicle, so it's not a supercharged V8?
Speaker 1:Oh, it's not turbo, it's not a 3.0 turbo.
Speaker 2:it's just a 3.0.
Speaker 3:It's a 3.0, she's diesel, at least, of course. But yeah, it's been a really nice opportunity to not have to stress on the road and if other people are stressing behind you, that's on them. It's totally on them. I literally cannot do anything.
Speaker 1:That's nice, though. That's nice to hear that you're finding it not stressful, and it has allowed you to take a step back with your driving habit.
Speaker 3:A lot of people think that it causes more stress.
Speaker 2:It has for me at certain times, just because I would know what the truck driver's feeling like when you've just been driving for that many hours and you're just trying to do what you've got to do. So, yeah, having a UHF is going to be fun for those moments in the future.
Speaker 3:It was funny when we started driving the bus after the paint job and we renewed it and went on our first small trip. Every time someone would pass us there'd be a little horn signal and we couldn't help but feel like it was a bit more aggressive than like Nice bus. We were navigating behind everyone who was overtaking us and they'd be like what's your problem?
Speaker 3:And now you just can't hold expectations of what other drivers have of you. You just got to drive a slow car and be that slow person. So we've got a really cool bumper sticker.
Speaker 2:It says it's not a fast car. No, it's not a slow car, it's a fast house. It's a fast house. And yeah, it could be a faster house, but it's a very rare house.
Speaker 1:So what's your favourite part of this bus?
Speaker 2:Honestly, just because it's maybe one of the most recent additions, like every bus that I've ever seen from pre I haven't even seen a new bus that's not a trans-Purth bus, honestly but I've never seen buses with like a complete inside step, like all of them have the raw fillers and just like very dangerous looking front step areas. So finishing this is one of the last jobs has been really, really exciting and making it a lot more homey.
Speaker 1:So for audio listeners, only just explain what you've got here, which people on the YouTube probably can see if it's not too dark.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we've got like a super well, because it's new. It's a shiny, checker plate, aluminium bottom step with like a fresh trim, and then we've got that second step that goes up.
Speaker 1:This is the funky thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we've put AstroTurf over that and I love the AstroTurf look and it's great for wiping your feet and whatnot. And then, obviously, the sliding door opens and needs brushes. Most of them have brushes to deal with the weather protection and such, and, yeah, we managed to find brushes. We used paint brushes for the bottom covering and I think what works well with our bus is also the security screens. That was a big drawing point to why this was a good one to have with the security screens, because you can lock yourselves in but still have all the fresh air with the screen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they provide a lot of airflow, also like visible privacy and also like all our windows work Like every window opened and had the right glass and it wasn't broken.
Speaker 3:That means that we can like if we needed to leave tarrants in the car, so we're like exploring places. Shopping or whatever we can open all of the windows and like angle the car for really nice airflow and that way people can't actually still break in because our windows are open and I can vouch for the fact that because this van is the buses quite tall, the amount of fresh air flow there actually is quite effective.
Speaker 1:I went in there a couple of days ago when it was 40 degrees and I couldn't believe you guys were in there, because it was actually really hot just outside stepped out here, and as soon as I went in there, it was actually very pleasant.
Speaker 2:It was like sort of walking into a house. It also really helps with that. Like I chose the blackout curtain material because I knew from doing the van choosing, yeah, getting the material that actually blocks the heat coming in, Like you can have the light if you want, but blocking the heat is really important.
Speaker 1:So you've been on the machine, on the sewing machine and you've sewn an entire busload of curtains so that every single window has sliding curtains, and he's also patchworked all of our old clothes together into our roof lining. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:So our roof lining is like an amalgamation of different squared textures, of different colors, of different things that we have to use and different, like memories in the cloth that are like on our roof. And that includes, like some really cool aesthetically functional features such as like pockets.
Speaker 2:Oh, they give away all our secrets.
Speaker 1:That's alright, don't gerble.
Speaker 3:No one can say We've got little zippers like pant pockets that are still like on the roof, so you can actually like, so we can have like little pockets inside and store it spots on our roof.
Speaker 1:I love this story about how much you have put into this bus parts of yourselves, considering that when you bought it it had an immaculate roof lining, it was like the best part of the bus.
Speaker 2:It was a bit of a decision to take it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's amazing how it's evolved into this and the ultimate repurposing of parts of your old life with your materialism that. I know you've had to work through all of that, because now you're no longer living in a house and I've watched you pack up things and a lot of stuff's gone to the opt shops.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've done so well.
Speaker 1:Yet you've managed to keep the special fabrics, which were meaningful, and they've been able to come with you on the roof. I think I really love this part of the uniqueness that you can get with a custom-built motorhome. Yeah, because it just keeps going, I'm sure.
Speaker 3:Leon can detail a few of the technical specs. We talked about his specs in his car. We didn't really talk much about the bus's specs.
Speaker 2:The other one should have sold by now, but we've been doing a lot of work on that to sell it again.
Speaker 3:So, the electrical specs for the bus include, include.
Speaker 2:So we've got three 160 watt panels on this one and we've got the 2000 watt inverter and We've got two lithium batteries. Yeah, yeah, go. Oh. So it was such a game changer. Yeah, super exciting to purchase.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you had a couple of house batteries or something in there and they're quite heavy, yeah, and we had, we had to buy the two batteries as well.
Speaker 2:So everything runs on the parallel secret. So even our starting batteries are like two six volt, two twelve volt, however it works, and, and so our house batteries also Just came out that we wanted to run them in parallel. So we got two lithium batteries I think they're like just the smaller side ones 120 watts, and we did, we did just go for the. We did we, we went with a lot of renegade kit for the, for the specs, and we did choose, we did choose some Kings Geo, just because it was the right, the right one for us. The fridge that it came with originally was like a gas and Electric, like to medic three way to medic fridge, the same as what was in our ultimate camper.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just a slightly older model and yeah, we knew how they were eyes and it just seemed right.
Speaker 2:But like thinking about it more and going through the build, like doing what we were Doing and like fully building it exactly the way we wanted, yeah, we just realized that it was Gonna be a lot more cost, time and like stress effect.
Speaker 3:With the pace of our lives, being born in the digital age, we want to be able to like set up and start start going. We don't want to have to like have a massive setup.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah turn the valve on quick flick the buttons and there is still that, they're still that.
Speaker 3:I've never had a problem system before, not as much, and especially with keeping your food stuffs Refrigerated is like.
Speaker 1:I think that's like a priority to just keep the electricity running like you know, yeah, the new fridge is really really been good for you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, 110 litres, and there's a freezer compartment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's all we need as well like we had 23 litres in the van. That was perfect for me and I could do the two-week kind of cycle where you need to go stock up and for us it was like just going too quick and we didn't need a full-size fridge. I love people have been like oh, why don't you? Have a full-size.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like there's, there's other things that require that space Prioritization in our life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we don't, we've got. We've got a filtered, a filtered tap and an unfiltered tap. Yeah, we've got diesel heater which is built into our diesel tank, so our fuel yeah, they run very small amount of fuel when we turn the diesel heater on, into the deep into the heater and and it the, the heating of the arm of the of the space is like amazing when we do turn it on.
Speaker 2:We've got a 12 volts fan. That was super important for me. Getting a 12 volt fan like traveling in the territory with no air-con before I actually went to every bunnings and every Kmart trying to find a handheld fan just to get through each day and they were sold out everywhere and like I would never get rid of my little, my little handheld fan.
Speaker 3:We've got a lot to get it. We've got two handheld fans, so one for each of us, but we've also got a fan Corner it's hard-wired.
Speaker 1:That's actually a really good one. You bought that online, yeah, what brand is that one?
Speaker 3:It's like a caravan.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not sure the brand, but it's a very standard. Sorocco yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I know David's a bit jealous of it because we can't have well, we don't have that option in our ultimate camper at the moment. We'll see how we go, but so we've got a bit of canvas.
Speaker 3:Another thing that the bus has is a built-in toilet that Leon and I will pull not fully built. Use, yeah, yeah it's a little space that you can put in a portable toilet and we've made it Use it use it inside the inside the boss in its own space. But yeah, we're pretty, we're pretty feral in our lifestyle choices and I'm sure that we will be mainly going outside to do that. There is activities.
Speaker 1:But this is coming on the back of a few episodes of our podcast. Yeah we were talking about, you know, disposing of waste. And I know, you guys, you know, aren't saying that, you're just gonna.
Speaker 3:Yeah, also in the places where we have to pay money to go to an RV site and they're like do you have a great water solution? Exactly, you do, exactly on, and the only thing that we don't really have, I think, with this is a shower, but like where we're pretty open to being able to solar shower bucket.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, just yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, you're probably gonna be chasing the sun a bit, yeah.
Speaker 2:And in yeah, you poke some holes in the bottom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you have hot water on tap?
Speaker 2:We don't have hot water on tap, but we do have the the four stove gas cooker. Yeah so it came the, the fit-out came with a range hood, the stove top and the whole sink space area, no what, that's what we've kept and that's probably like the most that we've kept, and the locations of those things and and kind of location of the bed and other than that we've just built what we want around it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, which is our life, you know, like this, fully stores life and. Exemplifies our life. And just to finish off your last question, which was what was your favorite part about the bus? Oh, that is like the artwork and and like what it does. To like do you when you leave the bus. So we invite people in and they're like wow, I've been looking at this bus.
Speaker 3:Oh my god, I want to see inside it. It looks amazing and they might come back an hour later. And they're like wow, I love the pattern, the design. And then they go in, and then they, we, we chat and they meet us for 30 minutes some of them can't even. Around the bus and and then we you know like we settle in and we start talking and stuff and we just get lost in the space that we've created.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then we leave the bus and you just forget that, that you're in this Like, that you're in this paint job, that you're in this artwork. You come back down and you're like oh, that's where I was in. Like, because when you're in there it's a whole nother space. There's so much.
Speaker 1:That's why it's the TARDIS.
Speaker 3:Exactly that's what I mean, and you take this space Anywhere that you want and and it's such an awesome opportunity to have, and I think we have such an awesome country to explore with, like.
Speaker 2:And that's what we wanted to represent in the paintwork as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um. So this beautiful design Repres is not to look like a school bus with the orange, but it most definitely part of the inspiration, like everything just came together with this, with this one.
Speaker 2:Like I loved the classic coaster school bus look with the orange but this was white and blue when you got it.
Speaker 1:So, you have completely Changed the color scheme.
Speaker 3:And we had a few other color schemes that we're looking at, but as soon as Leon whipped up this one, it was like, oh yeah, this is, this is yeah you did pretty good on your graphic design to do the mock-up which we all saw.
Speaker 1:So you've what sort of painting and how did you go about the painting, leon?
Speaker 2:um, that's, that's one almost to bring in Mr David over there. We did, we did all two pack painting on on this and we painted it kind of where it is right now. We painted it outside no workshop that we could find that's unfathomable to some people, I know. But here in WA.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, we have fairly much predictable and consistent weather patterns, so you can know ahead of time that you're not going to have rain, um, and it won't suddenly change during the day. So you were able to work around the weather, and most of it you did in the summertime.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was just coming off off the end of summer into winter.
Speaker 1:And we were almost.
Speaker 2:We were almost losing the the time frame and we were going to a like a week-long festival out in coolland and we wanted to do the paint job before that, before that week I think and I think it ended up. We taped it all up and did it the day that we got back pretty much and, yeah, it was super fun. How did it go?
Speaker 2:We did white first white first and we did it probably down to just past where the rent starts. And then we did the yellow, and then we did the orange, and then we did the red and then the black. Uh, we did the black line first and then the stencils. All the artwork on it we actually did by First projecting the images that we wanted onto a piece like a massive piece of paper inside the house like cross paper.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like cross paper and then we cut that out as like a paper template thing and I think all of us head of a go. We all got a spot on the car.
Speaker 1:You did the grass.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that did the eagle on the other side and some other trees. And so what we then did was we put masking tape, like painting tape, all On the paintwork and actually then stuck our template on and got a craft knife and actually cut Very, very scarily onto the paintwork yeah, to peel away the paper, the tape. Yeah, that you then leave. We like the outline of the of the tape that you then tape more around and you just spray, spray that in. So, yeah, it was very interesting figuring out, figuring out that yeah, the technique to do it, yeah, yeah, excellent.
Speaker 1:It's come up just beautiful and, as you say, you've had lots of beeps from onlookers. I remember you coming back on your first day that you actually drove it finished down to the beach. It was a beautiful afternoon and you did a coast drive Along the Perth beaches and it you, you were more than 10 minutes. We thought you'd had a breakdown. We thought you're just going down the the beach, which is literally two kilometers down the road, and you came back an hour and a half later and you were on cloud nine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we'd driven it up.
Speaker 1:So it's really nice when you've built something yourself and you can hear it in the way you two are talking about it that you've really. You have a much greater connection with your, your vehicle and your home, which is what it's going to be when you've built it yourself and looking at the dashboard that's, you know, even starting to get cracks.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter about, it's like you, we built that and yeah, the whole, the whole thing Is beautiful and even like.
Speaker 3:Like you know, I joined this relationship trying to be like a custom myself to Leon's van and and Leon's van rules and where things go. In Leon's van so getting to actually build and make the space with him, and and.
Speaker 1:It's been a real partnership.
Speaker 3:For my life as well, it's. It's really awesome to be able to drive to places and like and share that life.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's, fabulous. I bet you've got a lot of very invidious friends.
Speaker 3:Look, we'll have to start moving on.
Speaker 1:We've got a few more things I want to get through before we finish up the podcast today. So, um, very quickly, have you got some instagram accounts or youtube accounts that we can promote for you?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, firstly, the youtube. I just updated our custom URL. It is rugged world 83, so youtubecom forward slash rugged world a3.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah and then you can also find us on instagram personally at matty oj and at tp0j and and me, you also got rugged world.
Speaker 2:This is one word for my jewelry making and just hang off, because we've got a very noisy helicopter. And I'll just speak closer to the microphone. Yeah the my lifestyle life. My social media page is uh, instagram at wanderers, so a underscore wanderers underscore w a and d er us underscore.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, I'll follow up those and confirm with links On the, the blog and on the youtube channel for people to make that easier. Um, and on those accounts, is that where your jewelry?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so rugged world has the jewelry. The youtube has got like a bit of a longer term video Collection. It takes us a while to edit together videos, but they'll they end up there eventually and we'll hopefully be able to be like collaborating together in the future.
Speaker 3:Like all about travels. Yeah, I'll put in those videos to youtube, as well as our instagrams as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, instagram, like our personal pages, are where you can see a lot of matt posts, a lot of our like art um installations and collaborations.
Speaker 1:And I guess.
Speaker 2:I've posted a little bit more of the vehicle stuff so far but, they'll, they'll cross over eventually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, and so one last question for you guys about this whole lifestyle and this experience In hindsight is there anything that you wish you had known Before you embarked upon this that you could now give as advice for anyone that's thinking that they would want to do something like this?
Speaker 2:Oh, it's a tough one, if you Like. It's pretty obvious whether you know you want to do a full drive or a motor home. Um, that's kind of your first place to figure out how you want to travel. Do you want a full drive or do you want to be really comfortable long term? Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think, like for me, like you're, you're never Hore or broke or like, not enough to like, pursue your dreams and or to to buy your vehicle, to buy the thing, like, like it, it will make it happen. Yeah, and you've just got to make it happen because you will end up working your entire life and towards that dream and if you don't just do it, you won't get there.
Speaker 1:I love it, that's that's exactly how we started explorers. However long ago that was, I've mentioned it before 23 years ago, 25 years ago, we left our lifestyles and and did the unthinkable. And it's taking that leap of faith, having that, taking the risk, in the face of all the comments that your friends and your family will say oh, if you get out, you'll never get back in.
Speaker 2:It's that and it's making the most of what you've got when you've got it as well.
Speaker 3:And there's also dealing with people who who'll be like, oh like, are you sure you're ready or you're not really ready?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure they've criticized you because you're young and all that, but the truth is you're never ready until you're doing.
Speaker 2:You know like that's what you're doing, and you're learning from it every step of the way and just like, yeah, pushing through the challenges and the boundaries, like Like traveling by yourself or with another person, like you experience the same Chalenges and it's way more fun with you. Um, it's been an incredible journey by yourself and don't fear it If that's, if that's calling you. Like, don't think you like necessarily need someone to travel with. If you think you know, you've got got got the know in. Move around.
Speaker 1:Well, there you have it, folks. Thank you, leon Martin and Matt Jones, for being on the podcast today and sharing All those parts of your journey.
Speaker 1:It's been a real pleasure having you and I hope our listeners have enjoyed getting to know you a bit more and We'll try and put some more footage up of the bus on the youtube in coming times. It we've deliberately held off because it's been a bit of a whole big reveal and, um, yeah, it's a big project. So thanks very much for tuning in to the explorers podcast and thanks again, folks.
Speaker 2:Thank you, bye, bye, let's.
