Time to Roam Magazine Issue 7 - February/March 2014 | Page 29

About our
cover model
The 1947 Don featured on our cover, matched with
a 1949 Austin Sheerline are the pride of the fleet
of vehicles in the collection of Alan Stevens.
Alan is an avid collector of just about anything
ranging from Ford Prefect and Anglia cars, picnic
sets and one of the most extensivecollection
of Keith Winser caravan publications.
Regular Roam readers may know of Alan as
author of our ‘Toying with Caravans’ column.
He admits to coming relatively late to caravan
collecting, having started only in the 1990s with
a 1947 steel-bodied Carapark. Today he has
“six or seven” Caraparks among the 15 or so
caravans in his collection, which has outgrown
shed space on his small farm outside Bendigo.
Alan says his favourites are among the
oldest in the collection, built in the days before
factory manufacturing. He has several homemade caravans dating back as far as the 1920s.
He’s a walking encyclopedia when it comes
to information on just about every item.
The classic Austin, for example, is unusual because
it’s badged a Sheerline, yet has many luxury features
of the later Princess model. ‘The car is likely the only
one in existence as all other Princess-badged cars
have an aluminium body with lights built in the wheel
guard. The Poms refuse to believe such a car exists.”
Likewise, he’s traced the entire history of the 1948 Don.
“The original owners were Charlie and Alma
Bird from Wychitella and they lived in it for three
or four years while they built a house.” Alan paid
$2200 for the van in 2006 by which time it was
badly damaged with rot and white ants.
He spent many months restoring it, including
days sanding it back to the original timber.
“Much scraping with a hot air gun and the tally was
a barrow of paint and a red-lead caravan underneath.”
Alan likes to see the vans in his collection used
and makes them available for rent or lease.

Alan Stevens, the restored interior of his Don

Issue 07 Feb/Mar 2014

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