- This is my van. (upbeat music) (soft music) Hello, I'm Clare. I'm 64 years old. I live full time in my van, which is a Fiat Ducato Maxi, 2016, turbo diesel. I live fully off-grid with solar
power and a lithium system. Come and have a look inside! This is my van. And my van has a name, and
it's called the Mouse House. And there's a couple of
little mice in there. Would you like to come inside? (latch creaks) Come on in! Well, this part of the
van is probably the bit that makes this van a bit
different to other vans. When the white doors shut,
it's just a tradie's van, but when it's open, it's
a beautiful little house, complete with windows that open, actually. This one opens one way, and this one over here, opens another way, so I can get breezes in from,
oh, that's nice, actually, from, in whichever direction
it happens to be coming from. Behind that window is my office. I actually kept this
because I had it in my house and I loved it. And it's just a cabinet
but it has pullout shelf, which is excellent for a keyboard because I like to work on the
iMac standing up quite a lot. So a lot of gear here. You could call this my office. You could call the first
three drawers my office. You could call the bottom
drawer the toolshed. (chuckles) I had a house and I had a mortgage. And as you might know, being an artist your income is not much. So, then I thought, "Well, if I have something
small and beautiful "that I own without a mortgage, "that's gonna make me feel a lot better "than having four empty
bedrooms and a mortgage, "and then maintenance coming along." So, I sold the house, paid off the mortgage, bought an empty van, and found people that would, would do what I wanted to do. I needed it to be beautiful. I needed it to be artful. I needed that every time I
walked into it, I liked it, and I do. This little door, if you knock, (knocker clacking) takes you into Narnia,
no, it doesn't really. It takes you into my cab. I can clamber through there if I want to, or I can reach through in
there for anything that I need. And that's a heatproof curtain to just keep any heat from
the cab from coming into here. It's really well-insulated. I think I've got double
insulation on the ceiling, and the floor, and the walls. It's all insulated well. That's good to keep any heat
there might be out that way. This side, here we've got the kitchen. I like to cook so I have
lots of spices and knives. This is my pantry. This one here, tea towel rack may stay on. (chuckles) So it's quite a long
drawer that I pull out. I have a lot, I have
all the spices in there, and I have all the sauces
there, and olive oils, and various bits and pieces in there. And the one at the bottom here has a hot water system at the back, but it also stores
things like coffee beans, coffee grinder, and a fire extinguisher. The hot water system,
I just flick a switch, and the gas turns it on, and it'll fire up until I have hot water. A three-burner stove, an oven grill, and one or two pots and pans. These are probably very messy, but I do live in my van. I do live in it so this is what they look
like when you live in them. A few pots and, no, a
few plates and things. Oh, and there's a really
big cupboard here. It goes the full width of the van. Up in here, so many more
things can be stored in there. So I spent about a year
researching, reading, looking at tiny houses,
looking at van builds, and picking little bits out of them till I came up with this design. I used these books, and drew a lot. Oh, there you go. There's the picture of my van. Can you see that? These, well, anyway,
they're not very clear 'cause they're in pencil,
but this is how it happened. I think maybe three or
four of these books, and I designed it down to the millimeter. So, every millimeter of
this van is my design. And I was fortunate enough to find, I kept looking until I found
somebody that would build it. And I found a young couple
called Roaming Wild Campers, and they're based in a vineyard in Mudgee. Well, the van itself, I
remember, I paid 26,000 for. It had 160,000 kilometers on it. I'm pretty sure all the
inside including, you know, the toilet, the fridge, the stove, the extra insulation, maybe 45,000. So maybe about 70,000 or up. This is my sink. It was once a preserving
bowl when I had a house, an old French copper preserving bowl. Taps that I found in the garden, on an old enamel sink set up. And this, I think it's
cedar, the whole bench, live edge timbered cedar. The water comes from a 70 liter freshwater tank that's underneath, and there's also a 70
liter gray water tank. Personally, I use a bowl in my sink, and if there's dry patches on the grass, I'd rather throw my water
out than hold it in a tank, but I do have a tank. Underneath that, we've got
the usual dishwashing liquid, whoops, type stuff cupboard. And then the Atomic lives
in there when I travel. Enough cutlery for an army
even though I live by myself. (chuckles) I couldn't let everything go! Some of this cutlery is really lovely. Another drawer and another
one at the bottom there, a few more bits and pieces. To work out what I needed in the van, I wrote down what I did
each part of the day from when I woke up, so that I
made sure I had those things. I had the place to brush my teeth. I had somewhere to stand
up to work on the computer 'cause I like standing up. So I just thought about
what it was that I did and what I really liked doing, and what I would miss if I didn't have. This part of the bench is
where I can cook things, and I've got plenty of room. But underneath it, this one lifts up. See, there's a couple of hinges. And this is actually my bathroom. So, this will hold up here. I can put a shower curtain on here, and inside I have a composting toilet, it has
no chemicals whatsoever. And I also have a shower that I can just kind of hang up here. It's got a trigger on it, so
I'm not using too much water. I can, would you like to see some water? Let's see the water flow. There is a drain hole in there, of course. I turn on the tap, quite groovy taps. And... (water swooshing) There, water. And the pump for all this is under my bed. So it's under, about that area, and the pump comes through for
this, and for the taps here. So that's a two-in-one thing. I've got extra bench space
and I've got a bathroom, and I've got storage. Definitely, living intentionally
is a big part of it. That's right. You know how much water you have onboard, so you're water-conscious. You know how much sunlight's
been on the solar panels, so you know how much energy you've got. So sometimes, like if I was
parked here for a long time, and a lot of shade, I probably wouldn't
use the coffee grinder. I might do it by hand. (chuckles) I might just drink tea that day. (light music) And over here is the sitting area. I'll just shut this door and show you. So I'll close the door here. Open the window, let some air in. There we go. So this is kind of my all-purpose
sitting area, I suppose. These things just hang
here, towels, a jacket. I have a little library. And this, so I can sit on here, and I can pull this table out here, and eat a meal in quite a civil way. I can also invite a friend
and put a foldout chair there. And that's that part. I'm sitting on the fridge, which is, I think it's about 50, ah, there you go, it's 52 liter Bushman. At the moment, it's
running at three degrees. At the end of this part is... Well, this is all the solar stuff, which I honestly, apart from telling you that there's a 200 amp
hour lithium battery, and there's other stuff. (laughs) There's other stuff, and it all works. Oh, now you're facing straight
into the bedroom. (chuckles) So without moving very far at all, we've come to the bedroom. Overhead there, my clothes cupboards. Right now, we've got a disco
happening from the crystal, which is quite nice. My bed, would you believe, even though it looks big, is a single bed. Because behind this bed,
I've got more storage, so there's more storage
cupboards behind there. (gentle guitar music) This is a big skylight. I think at the time, it was
the biggest I could get. And I can wind this up so high that if I want to, I can stand on the bed
and do night photography through there. I'll just show you how the
cover of the two things, take the disco away. This can, pulls back, and this one stops the full moon keeping
you awake all night. (chuckles) The only downside is when it rains a lot. And I think other people in
vans will say the same thing. I'm fortunate in as much as I do like to do a lot of work with photography and sometimes small film, so I'm occupied. Solo women living in a van, that is the first question, is it safe? Will I be safe? And a good idea is to have
the way to get from the cab from the back into the cab and drive away. That's a good idea. If you park somewhere
that you're not sure of, don't put your awning out,
just be ready to drive away. I'll show you what's under my
bed from the back of the van. Now for start, on one side,
I have a LP gas storage, and I have two big cylinders, one behind the other. When the first one runs out, I just turn the tap over
and run on the back one till I change it over again. That's just really handy. You don't want to run out of
gas halfway through cooking. And on this side, this is
another solar panel here. So I can put chairs, tables in these spaces. Even the back doors are insulated as well underneath these panels. And I personally, they're
not the most artful things, they work really well. This van is only six meters long, and it has a bathroom, a
kitchen, a lounge room, a bedroom, a storage shed. (chuckles) It has a lot for six meters. Buy a van, get a van,
do it, plan it though. Plan it, spend some time, draw it. Work out what you want in it because I think it's a bit difficult to keep buying and selling vans because you've made a mistake. Do it, life's too short to you know, somewhere along the track
saying, "I wish I'd have done." Have a go at it. (upbeat music) - Thanks for watching episode
two of Home On The Road. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out the
others in the series. And if you want to help
me keep making episodes, please consider supporting me on Patreon. It's some pretty cool rewards there, and you can chip in for as
little as a dollar a month. So thanks again for watching, and I'll see you on the next video.
Loved this. What a beautiful van and beautiful lady 😊