THE STATE OF PLAY

In Australia, Recreational Vehicles (RVs) have been around for a lot longer than many people think. They don’t quite go back to the Model T Ford era but certainly the early 1920s saw a few caravans on the road.

There are number of caravans still around today which have names that might be familiar from a few generations ago such as Viscount, Millard and Franklin but it’s only the names that have survived — the original manufacturers having long gone. There are a few exceptions to that though. Roma Caravans for instance, has been around since 1928 and has been in the hands of the Palmerini family since the mid 1950s. That’s some lineage

Mastercraft is a name known by few today but for about 30 years from the 1930s, it was a Sydney-based manufacturer of both caravans and motorhomes. Other names that came out of the 1950s and 1960s include Crestline and Carapark. No longer in operation, these vans were mostly built on a steel chassis with a Bondwood body. There are still a few of the distinctly-shaped caravans around today.

Motorhomes have a slightly more chequered history but one of the first few built in Australia is reckoned to be Gerhard (Pop) Kaelsers in 1929. Called “Home from Home”, the motorhome was built on a Dodge Tourer and the one that followed can be seen on display in Goolwa, South Australia.

A subset of the caravan industry is fifth wheelers or gooseneck trailers. Strangely, despite having better towing characteristics than a caravan, fifth wheelers have never been very popular in Australia. However, there were and are a small number of manufacturers who fill that market niche.

BOOM TIMES

In the 1960s and early '70s, the RV industry was in its heyday. There were five major caravan manufacturers — Viscount, Millard, Franklin,