Housetrucker
Encyclopedia
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
during the mid-1970s and even though there are fewer today they continue to travel New Zealand roads.
Today these hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
nomads are found traveling independently and in convoys from town to town making a living from small cottage industries such as arts and crafts
Arts and crafts
Arts and crafts comprise a whole host of activities and hobbies that are related to making things with one's hands and skill. These can be sub-divided into handicrafts or "traditional crafts" and "the rest"...
, or following various fruit picking
Seasonal human migration
Seasonal human migration is very common in agricultural cycles. It includes migrations such as moving sheep or cattle to higher elevations during summer to escape heat and find more forage...
seasons as they occur throughout the nation. Other part-time housetruckers use their handcrafted
Handicraft
Handicraft, more precisely expressed as artisanic handicraft, sometimes also called artisanry, is a type of work where useful and decorative devices are made completely by hand or by using only simple tools. It is a traditional main sector of craft. Usually the term is applied to traditional means...
rigs only when taking an extended holiday. Some older vehicles which no longer operate are lifted on blocks and used as permanent caravans or extra rooms on properties and in caravan parks.
The notion of living a nomad
Nomad
Nomadic people , commonly known as itinerants in modern-day contexts, are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world. Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but...
ic lifestyle in mobile collectives and following the seasons is older than civilization
Civilization
Civilization is a sometimes controversial term that has been used in several related ways. Primarily, the term has been used to refer to the material and instrumental side of human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor. Such civilizations are generally...
itself. Such examples of early tribes like native American Indians
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
wandered across the nation, periodically moving location to maximise the advantages to climate and the environment
Natural environment
The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living species....
. Throughout old Europe, the Middle East
Dom people
The Dom of the Middle East are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group. Some authors relate them to the Domba people of India.- Culture :...
and Asia
Lyuli
Lyuli are a subgroup of the Dom people living in Central Asia, primarily Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.Lyuli speak a Lyuli dialect of the Domari language....
are found traditional Gypsies whose lifestyle is similar to that of the modern housetrucker.
New Zealand connection
There are few places left in the world where housetrucking can be an uninhibited lifestyle with the kinds of simple home made rigs New Zealand boasts. In other countries stringent laws regarding the roadworthy standards of older vehicles have forced many old housetrucks and buses from the roads and into graveyards of isolated farm paddocks and wrecking yards. Other laws concerning where one may park or camp have seriously restricted life on the road. The KiwiKiwi (people)
Kiwi is the nickname used internationally for people from New Zealand, as well as being a relatively common self-reference. The name derives from the kiwi, a flightless bird, which is native to, and the national symbol of, New Zealand...
housetrucker, living within a culture which popularizes the benefits of preserving these old motor relics, appreciates their truckers' haven. That New Zealand transport law requires that all vehicles submit to a thorough mechanical Warrant of Fitness every six months ensures that these old motor-homes remain roadworthy.
Many housetruckers choose to travel in convoy, and in New Zealand there are trucker groups of families who travel together from city to city, and who assemble most weekends in different parks to hold markets from where they sell their wares. There are two separate groups who travel New Zealand today selling their market goods; these are Gypsy Faire and Gypsy Travelers.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s many housetruck conventions and grass-roots festivals of all themes were held throughout New Zealand where housetruckers would converge, not only for the event, but for the opportunity to connect and share information with other truckers from across the nation. These events were conducted around areas considers as alternative lifestyle
Alternative lifestyle
An alternative lifestyle is a lifestyle generally perceived to be outside the cultural norm. Usually, but not always, it implies an affinity or identification within some matching subculture...
zones within the country. Many a low-key festival circuit was held throughout the regions of Coromandel
Coromandel Peninsula
The Coromandel Peninsula lies in the North Island of New Zealand. It is part of the Waikato Region and Thames-Coromandel District and extends 85 kilometres north from the western end of the Bay of Plenty, forming a natural barrier to protect the Hauraki Gulf and the Firth of Thames in the west...
, Northland, West Auckland
Waitakere
Waitakere City was the name of a city which existed from 1989 until 2010 in the Auckland region. It was New Zealand's fifth largest city, with an annual growth of about 2%...
, the west coast of the South Island
South Island
The South Island is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand, the other being the more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman Sea, to the south and east by the Pacific Ocean...
and around Takaka out of Nelson
Nelson, New Zealand
Nelson is a city on the eastern shores of Tasman Bay, and is the economic and cultural centre of the Nelson-Tasman region. Established in 1841, it is the second oldest settled city in New Zealand and the oldest in the South Island....
. For two decades Mollers farm at Oratia
Waitakere
Waitakere City was the name of a city which existed from 1989 until 2010 in the Auckland region. It was New Zealand's fifth largest city, with an annual growth of about 2%...
west of Auckland, a popular venue for blues and folk festivals, offered an open house for truckers to park on a semi-permanent basis.
History
Counterculture of the 1960s
The counterculture of the 1960s refers to a cultural movement that mainly developed in the United States and spread throughout much of the western world between 1960 and 1973. The movement gained momentum during the U.S. government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam...
movements, New Zealand with its unique Kiwi experience was fashioned from the early American and British hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
crusades and the then alternative music revolution
British Invasion
The British Invasion is a term used to describe the large number of rock and roll, beat, rock, and pop performers from the United Kingdom who became popular in the United States during the time period from 1964 through 1966.- Background :...
. In the 1960s and 1970s hippie culture spread worldwide through a fusion of rock music
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, and psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music that is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues rock bands in United States and the United Kingdom...
; it also found expression in the arts
The arts
The arts are a vast subdivision of culture, composed of many creative endeavors and disciplines. It is a broader term than "art", which as a description of a field usually means only the visual arts. The arts encompass visual arts, literary arts and the performing arts – music, theatre, dance and...
, specifically in literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, the dramatic arts and the creative arts
Creative Arts
Creative arts is the term used to describe different types of art. Specifically, to introduce fine art ideas, techniques, skills and media. It is generally used as an umbrella for Dramaturgy, Music , Graphic Arts/Cartooning, Performing Arts, Film and Publishing, Galleries and Museums and the Visual...
. The early and modern housetruckers essentially derived their cultures and belief systems from these original influences.
The first groups of housetruckers to travel in an a co-ordinated convoy was the Nambassa Winter Show with Mahana
Nambassa Winter Show with Mahana
The Nambassa Winter Show with Mahana was all about a bunch of aspiring young hippie entertainers who moved into a youth camp in west Auckland out of which this community of 60 people produced and directed two musical theatrical productions and toured the North Island of New Zealand in a convoy of...
in 1978 and then again Mahana traveling with the Roadshow Fayre after the 1979 Nambassa festival.
Nambassa Winter Show with Mahana
The NambassaNambassa
Nambassa was a series of hippie-conceived festivals held between 1976 and 1981 on large farms around Waihi and Waikino in New Zealand. They were music, arts and alternatives festivals that focused on peace, love, and an environmentally friendly lifestyle...
Winter Show with Mahana was a musical theatrical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
production of 60 entertainers and crew who toured the North Island
North Island
The North Island is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the much less populous South Island by Cook Strait. The island is in area, making it the world's 14th-largest island...
of New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
in a convoy of mobile homes
New age travellers
New Age Travellers are groups of people who often espouse New Age or hippie beliefs and travel between music festivals and fairs in order to live in a community with others who hold similar beliefs. Their transport and homes consist of vans, lorries, buses, narrowboats and caravans converted into...
, buses and vans, performing at major centres and theatres throughout September and October 1978. While initially four main shows were scheduled for this collective theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
company, repeat and spontaneous performances around the nation saw this number of live performances increased to over ten. This theatrical extravaganza was organised by the Nambassa
Nambassa
Nambassa was a series of hippie-conceived festivals held between 1976 and 1981 on large farms around Waihi and Waikino in New Zealand. They were music, arts and alternatives festivals that focused on peace, love, and an environmentally friendly lifestyle...
Trust as part of its national promotion of the arts
ARts
aRts, which stands for analog Real time synthesizer, is an audio framework that is no longer under development. It is best known for previously being used in KDE to simulate an analog synthesizer....
and towards promoting its 1979 three day music, crafts and alternative lifestyle
Counterculture of the 1960s
The counterculture of the 1960s refers to a cultural movement that mainly developed in the United States and spread throughout much of the western world between 1960 and 1973. The movement gained momentum during the U.S. government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam...
festival which was held in Waihi
Waihi
Waihi is a town in Hauraki District in the North Island of New Zealand, especially notable for its history as a gold mine town. It had a population of 4,503 at the 2006 census....
.
The Nambassa festival connection
Nambassa
Nambassa was a series of hippie-conceived festivals held between 1976 and 1981 on large farms around Waihi and Waikino in New Zealand. They were music, arts and alternatives festivals that focused on peace, love, and an environmentally friendly lifestyle...
alternative festivals. The annual mobile homes pilgrimage to Nambassa
Nambassa
Nambassa was a series of hippie-conceived festivals held between 1976 and 1981 on large farms around Waihi and Waikino in New Zealand. They were music, arts and alternatives festivals that focused on peace, love, and an environmentally friendly lifestyle...
grew in strength, and creative design of trucks increased, as each festival unfolded, culminating in an amazing display of thousands of unique innovative rigs and vans at the 1981 festival. There were just a handful of inspiring-looking rigs in 1978, these wonderful early machines prompting a popularity explosion in this unique trucking culture. Many a jovial debate was had around camp fires arguing as to who actually built the first machines to adorn New Zealand roads.
Throughout the 1980s many mobile homes frequented the Sweetwater’s music festivals, and alternative
Subculture
In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...
festivals regularly held throughout the country.
Nambassa
Between 1976 and 1981, hippie music festivals were held on large farms around WaihiWaihi
Waihi is a town in Hauraki District in the North Island of New Zealand, especially notable for its history as a gold mine town. It had a population of 4,503 at the 2006 census....
and Waikino
Waikino
Waikino is a small town situated in the North Island of New Zealand nestled in the Southern end of a gorge alongside the Ohinemuri River, between Waihi and the Karangahake Gorge. The Waikino district lies at the base of the ecologically sensitive Coromandel Peninsula with its vast tracts of lush...
in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
-Aotearoa
Aotearoa
Aotearoa is the most widely known and accepted Māori name for New Zealand. It is used by both Māori and non-Māori, and is becoming increasingly widespread in the bilingual names of national organisations, such as the National Library of New Zealand / Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa.-Translation:The...
. Named "Nambassa", the festivals focused on peace
Peace
Peace is a state of harmony characterized by the lack of violent conflict. Commonly understood as the absence of hostility, peace also suggests the existence of healthy or newly healed interpersonal or international relationships, prosperity in matters of social or economic welfare, the...
, love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
, and a balanced lifestyle, featuring workshops and displays advocating alternative lifestyles, clean and sustainable energy
Sustainable energy
Sustainable energy is the provision of energy that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Sustainable energy sources include all renewable energy sources, such as hydroelectricity, solar energy, wind energy, wave power, geothermal...
, and unadulterated foods. Nambassa is also the tribal name of a trust that has championed sustainable ideas and demonstrated practical counterculture
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
and alternative lifestyle
Alternative lifestyle
An alternative lifestyle is a lifestyle generally perceived to be outside the cultural norm. Usually, but not always, it implies an affinity or identification within some matching subculture...
methods since the early 1970s.
Road folk will insist that a mobile home is the ideal hippie set up for home ownership, self sufficiency, transport and to facilitate a free nomadic lifestyle. And in the 1970s anyone in New Zealand could own one very cheaply.
Construction
Most 1970s mobile homes were constructed from the chassis upwards utilising predominantly cheap recycledRecycling
Recycling is processing used materials into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution and water pollution by reducing the need for "conventional" waste disposal, and lower greenhouse...
materials. Throughout this era house-truck rigs were constructed on the decks of old ex farm trucks which could then be purchased for $500 to $2500. House-buses were either stripped down to the chassis in preparation for construction or just added onto, to facilitate increased living areas. As opposed to the bright colourful American and British versions of the 1960s, many of the early Kiwi
Kiwi (people)
Kiwi is the nickname used internationally for people from New Zealand, as well as being a relatively common self-reference. The name derives from the kiwi, a flightless bird, which is native to, and the national symbol of, New Zealand...
rigs were finished in earthy colored timber exteriors. This was due in part to the fact that in the 1970s the Toyota Motor company imported their new vehicles from Japan in car-crates which were constructed from reasonable quality marine grade plywood. The crate
Crate
A crate is a large shipping container, often made of wood, typically used to transport large, heavy or awkward items. A crate has a self-supporting structure, with or without sheathing. For a wooden container to be a crate, all six of its sides must be put in place to result in the rated strength...
s came with good quality framed floors. These were the perfect material in which to construct and clad a house truck. In the 1970s one could then purchase a complete car crate (six-sided) for around $25. An average size house-truck took up most of five car crates to build. In the 1970s a large number of derelict country farm houses from New Zealand's
Agathis australis
Agathis australis, commonly known as the kauri, is a coniferous tree found north of 38°S in the northern districts of New Zealand's North Island. It is the largest but not tallest species of tree in New Zealand, standing up to 50 m tall in the emergent layer above the forest's main canopy. The...
, totara
Podocarpus totara
Podocarpus totara is a species of podocarp tree endemic to New Zealand. It grows throughout the North Island and northeastern South Island in lowland, montane and lower subalpine forest at elevations of up to 600 m.-Description:...
and rimu
Dacrydium cupressinum
Dacrydium cupressinum, commonly known as rimu, is a large evergreen coniferous tree endemic to the forests of New Zealand. It is a member of the southern conifer group, the podocarps. The former name "red pine" has fallen out of common use....
. Other materials were purchased from timber recyclers and secondhand traders
Used goods
A second-hand or used good is one that is being purchased by or otherwise transferred to a second or later end user. A used good can also simply mean it is no longer in the same condition as it was when it was first transferred to the current end user...
. One could purchase cheaply a good second-hand wood fired potbelly or small wood stove
Masonry heater
A masonry heater is a device for warming a home that captures the heat from periodic burning of fuels , and then radiates that heat over a long period at a fairly constant temperature. The technology exists in many forms from the Roman hypocaust to the Austrian/German kachelofen...
with a wetback attached, for cooking, heating hot water and warmth over the winter months. As most housetrucks parked in non residential areas very few of the early housetrucks were wired up for mains electricity. Gas lighting
Gas lighting
Gas lighting is production of artificial light from combustion of a gaseous fuel, including hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide, propane, butane, acetylene, ethylene, or natural gas. Before electricity became sufficiently widespread and economical to allow for general public use, gas was the most...
and candle
Candle
A candle is a solid block or cylinder of wax with an embedded wick, which is lit to provide light, and sometimes heat.Today, most candles are made from paraffin. Candles can also be made from beeswax, soy, other plant waxes, and tallow...
s were the norm. Some trucks utilized a small gas or kerosene stove to supplement cooking over hot summer months. All these items were purchased second hand. Some early 1970s rigs experimented with home made wind turbine
Wind turbine
A wind turbine is a device that converts kinetic energy from the wind into mechanical energy. If the mechanical energy is used to produce electricity, the device may be called a wind generator or wind charger. If the mechanical energy is used to drive machinery, such as for grinding grain or...
s for lighting; however these large units even though they were fastened to the roof during travel, proved awkward. Today smaller modern units can be purchased at a reasonable price. Innovative housetruckers looking for the complete self-sufficient unit attached gas producer
Wood gas
Wood gas is a syngas fuel which can be used as a fuel for furnaces, stoves and vehicles in place of petrol, diesel or other fuels. During the production process biomass or other carbon-containing materials is gasified within the oxygen-limited environment of a wood gas generator to produce hydrogen...
units to their rigs, effectively running their engines for free on charcoal gas.
See also
- NambassaNambassaNambassa was a series of hippie-conceived festivals held between 1976 and 1981 on large farms around Waihi and Waikino in New Zealand. They were music, arts and alternatives festivals that focused on peace, love, and an environmentally friendly lifestyle...
- Hippies
- Nambassa Winter Show with MahanaNambassa Winter Show with MahanaThe Nambassa Winter Show with Mahana was all about a bunch of aspiring young hippie entertainers who moved into a youth camp in west Auckland out of which this community of 60 people produced and directed two musical theatrical productions and toured the North Island of New Zealand in a convoy of...
- New age travellersNew age travellersNew Age Travellers are groups of people who often espouse New Age or hippie beliefs and travel between music festivals and fairs in order to live in a community with others who hold similar beliefs. Their transport and homes consist of vans, lorries, buses, narrowboats and caravans converted into...
- Recreational vehicleRecreational vehicleRecreational vehicle or RV is, in North America, the usual term for a Motor vehicle or trailer equipped with living space and amenities found in a home.-Features:...