A Festival-Bus Life.
Our eldest daughter, Saska, was 3 months old when we made the snap decision to buy a huge, 40 year old, 9 years dormant, double-decker bus from a paddock in the middle of NSW. She (the bus) was eventually christened Charlotte, and so began a journey that lasted the next 13 years, thousands and thousands of kilometres and countless music festivals across Australia and eventually the world.
The old girl Charlotte began life in Australia in 1973 as a Sydney passenger bus, doing the Sydney to Newcastle run. After being decommissioned her life took on a couple of other iterations, firstly as the 'Double-decker Diner' at The Salamanca Markets in Hobart, Tasmania, then on to Bathurst NSW as a restoration project which was never completed. Until we bought her.
Charlotte had been sitting still in a paddock for 9 years when we found her and remarkably, started up first go. Although, it was certainly a hiccupy maiden voyage, driving her from Bathurst NSW to South Gippsland, Victoria, a distance of about 1500 kms took us about 3 weeks. In true Jordi and Elin style (my brother calls it blind optimism) we had COMPLETELY UNDERESTIMATED how this decision was going to totally dominate, and ultimately change our lives.
We had both been fruit picking and working our way around Australia when we met, but now we had one small baby, and another one soon to be on the way, and we both felt there had to be another way to fund this gypsy bus lifestyle, and so The Psybus was born.
A coffee shop/chai lounge, comfy festival hang out zone and sometime party space combined. We set up our cafe at Rainbow Serpent Festival, Meredith Festival, Falls Festival, Splendour in the Grass, Strawberry Fields Festival, Cairns Solar Eclipse Festival and many, many festivals, parades and parties in-between. And what began as an ideal way to fund our roving lifestyle soon became a full time gig that led us into other related side jobs which took us all over the country and eventually the world, working at massive festivals like the Oregon Eclipse Festival in Oregon, USA in 2017, a mega 60,000 capacity event.
Each and every time our 2 darling children came with us, home schooled and educated with the colours of the outdoor life, surrounded by the beautiful faces, the epic creativity, people from all over the world who became our family and the crazy happiness, exhaustion and intense hard work and challenges that all mesh together in the festival lifestyle.
In 2020, mid way through the Covid lockdowns here in Victoria, with the entire festival industry completely smashed to smithereens we made the heartbreaking decision to sell our beloved Charlotte and move on to completely new creative ventures. How delighted we were though, to sell her to a beautiful family who are also the proud owners of Priscilla the Queen of the Desert (yes, the ACTUAL bus from the iconic Australian film). So as it ends, for us, our darling Charlotte, the queen of Australian festivals and Priscilla the queen of the desert carry on living side by side onwards and through many more on-the-road adventures.
Each and every time our 2 darling children came with us, home schooled and educated with the colours of the outdoor life, surrounded by the beautiful faces, the epic creativity, people from all over the world who became our family and the crazy happiness, exhaustion and intense hard work and challenges that all mesh together in the festival lifestyle.
In 2020, mid way through the Covid lockdowns here in Victoria, with the entire festival industry completely smashed to smithereens we made the heartbreaking decision to sell our beloved Charlotte and move on to completely new creative ventures. How delighted we were though, to sell her to a beautiful family who are also the proud owners of Priscilla the Queen of the Desert (yes, the ACTUAL bus from the iconic Australian film). So as it ends, for us, our darling Charlotte, the queen of Australian festivals and Priscilla the queen of the desert carry on living side by side onwards and through many more on-the-road adventures.