Time to Roam Magazine Issue 4 - August/September 2013 | Page 20

It’s a Modern Mystery
Tracing the history behind WA’s great classic caravan builder
The West Australian State Library
has some amazing photographs of
the WA-built Modern Caravans of
the 1950s, but information is
a little harder to come by.
The archive pictures reproduced here
show big sleek caravans you’d almost think
were imported from the west coast of the
USA rather than built on our own west
coast in the 1950s. Perth at that time had a
population of just 350,000.
Features that stand out include louvre
and port-hole windows, full size kitchen
appliances, lush furnishings and fancy

cabinetry. They also boasted aluminium
frames – well before the big east coast
manufacturers caught on.
The 20 foot-plus vans in the archive photos
taken at a Perth show would have required a
big American V8 to tow them back then. The
display also shows kit packages for do-ityourself handymen – an option popular with
many van builders at the time.
By the 1960s there were plenty of
compact Modern models available, all
with the same striking design features
now sought after by the new breed
of vintage van enthusiasts today.
According to chat forums on

popular Aussie vintage van sites
vintagecaravansforum.com and
ourtouringpast.com, Modern was the
brainchild of a Yugoslav immigrant, but even
his name goes unrecorded.
They were built at a prominent factory on
the busy corner intersection of Wanneroo
Road and Royal Streets in the suburb of
Tuart Hill – the exact location is stamped on
the ID plate of each.
By the 1970s Modern was also building
large and lavish looking slide-on
motorhomes and the WA Library archive
shows an impressive model mounted on the
back of a Toyota Dyna truck.
> continued page 26

20

www.timetoroam.com.au