Rongo was conceived at the end of 2020 while I was hotel-bound during my two weeks of Covid quarantine. Bored and scrolling Facebook Marketplace, I stumbled across a 1991 Mitsubishi school bus. I copied the link and sent it to my brother, Craig, with a sarcastic message about how funny it would be to own a bus. Craig either didn't pick up the sarcasm or could straight up see the potential, and our conversation became serious. Soon questions flew about bargaining the seller down and if we knew anyone with a Class Two licence who could collect it. Before we knew it, we'd bought a bus.
Completely ripping out the interior back to the metal framing, we started from scratch and custom-built our dream adventure bus.”
Craig and Henry, our qualified Class Two driver, drove through the night to Oamaru, gave the bus a quick once-over, fired it up, and managed to get it safely to Wanaka. Being locked in my hotel room, I was going crazy with excitement as Craig sent through sporadic updates.
Dad wasn't sure what to think when he woke up in the morning to find a 10-metre-long bus parked on his lawn. He generously gave us use of his workshop, and we parked up the bus for the next four months and got to work on the conversion. Between two engineers, a chippie, and
