Inside The Coolest Home On Wheels

Illawarra Mercury

Saturday April 8, 2006

By LINTON BESSER

IT is the most extraordinary motorhome the Illawarra has seen.

And on Wednesday, into the sunset it went, with everyone on board: Erik and Ellen O'Dempsey, Binty the dog, Bubsy the cat and Basil the canary.

Two reverse-cycle airconditioners, 24 solar panels, a commercial gas-powered kitchen with a 280-litre chest freezer and full-sized fridge, a garbage chute, leather couches, a queen-size bed and a barbie big enough for the entire Carnarvon caravan park ... whenever they finally get there.

Wait, there's more: two televisions and DVD players, a stereo and hi-fi, a complete laundry, a generator big enough to power a small town, an antique 1911 "Bundy" clock, a mahogany fold-out bar, hand-cut Illawarra Mountain Plum Pine bench-tops and enough refrigerated, filtered drinking water to quench any outback Queensland thirst.

But this is no ordinary off-the-rack Winnebago. The entire Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang-like machine was built by hand - even the lounge room and bedroom that, at the touch of a button, expand out of the side of the bus like an accordion.

After a near fatal accident with an oil tanker on the Hume Hwy five years ago, Mr and Mrs O'Dempsey decided to throw it all in, and ratchet up their plans to travel Australia in a refitted 1979 Domino coach.

"We realised that you're a long time dead, and it can happen quickly," Mr O'Dempsey said.

Six weeks later they sold their timber business, and not long after that, they then sold their Otford home.

They moved down to a corrugated tin shed on a rented bit of earth at Dapto, and began work on the bus - a $250,000 labour of love that, after five years, finally came to a close this week.

"Where will we go? It depends," Mr O'Dempsey said. "If it's too wet, too cold or too hot we'll just move on."

Mrs O'Dempsey said they would travel the country from Mogo to Darwin carrying out all kinds of maintenance jobs on remote properties on behalf of the Anglican Church.

"It's called bush-church aid," she said.

The only concrete destinations for this nomadic couple are Melbourne, to visit their son, and Perth, to see their daughter.

But this is a case where the journey is far more important than the destination.

"Leaving this afternoon? It just feels magic."

© 2006 Illawarra Mercury

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