It’s no castle in the sky, this whimsical little gypsy vardo. It was built as much for pragmatic reasons as for a fanciful vision, says Jill Malcolm.
Sandy and Phil Coppoolse live on a 60-acre lifestyle block of land near Ōhope. The couple are in their mid-fifties; their sons have grown up and flown the nest and the pair began to feel the need to get away from the farm from time to time. It couldn’t be for long, as they had animals who depended on them. A caravan might have been the answer but it wasn’t within their budget.
Phil, the practical one, is a carpenter and he decided that the answer was to build a caravan himself. However, it was not going to be straightforward. Sandy has an aversion to straight lines and white walls. She needs curves and colour and favours a vintage style reminiscent of the old house trucks. And so they came to the idea of building a vardo designed from photographs they found of the old gypsy caravans from last century.
Traditionally vardos were horse-drawn wagons used by Romany travellers in England and prized, not just for their practicality but for their aesthetic design and beauty. They were most often pulled by Gypsy Cobs that had been bred for their sturdiness and strength. When it was finished, Sandy and Phil’s caravan would also be drawn by horse power, but of a slightly different kind –that of their Ford Ranger ute. Vardos were nearly always artistically decorated, intricately carved and brightly painted and even though Romany lifestyle drew unfair derision from settled communities, vardos must surely have livened up the lanes and village greens of England in the mid-1800s to the early twentieth century. For Sandy, with her love of fun and fantasy, a vardo seemed like an exciting idea.
The sides of a vardo slope considerably outward as they rise toward the eaves of the bow shaped roof. This didn’t seem a challenge for Phil. “My biggest problem,” he laughed, “was Sandy! When it came to decorating the exterior with the frills she wanted, I had to create the curves that trim the windows, fascia and barge boards on plywood and rough sawn pine, using a rubbish tin lid to trace them and then cutting them out with a jigsaw. It took a very long time.”
They already owned the trailer they would use. Its footprint was 2.4m long and 1.7m wide, but the side walls of the vardo would widen out at the top to 2.5m. Phil decided on a height of 2.3m, which would give him plenty of head room even though he is six feet tall.
“All up it was going to weigh about 750 kilos,” he said, “which is the maximum weight allowed for a non-braked trailer, and so the first task was to fit the trailer with heavy duty springs and heavy duty tyres.” Next came the frame, which was next erected using 50x50mm gauged timber. He then fashioned the exterior walls from 12mm thick plywood, added sheets of polystyrene insulation and lined the interior with a lighter 3mm thick plywood. The curved roof was the last exterior construction. It is made of corrugated colour steel which, he said, was easy to fit. The steps and entrance door at the back is split, which is not only in keeping with the style but also keeps Ruby, their beloved little Jack Russell, inside.
Phil is pleased with the result, saying, “ I knew it was structurally sound, and I found it well-balanced to tow”. Once you step inside the vardo, it’s astonishing how spacious it feels. “People are always surprised by this illusion of space which is brought about by the height and the sloping walls,” Phil says. “They also comment on how well everything fits in.”
There is a double east-west bed at the front end that folds into a settee during the day if needed. Phil made the kitchen bench from a live edged, rough-sawn timber slab, and the fitted sink is filled with a hand pump. In keeping with the vintage style, the interior and exterior lighting comes from two retro-style tilley lamps that have been fitted with LED lights powered by power banks. Cooking is by way of a three-burner gas cooker given to them 30 years ago as a wedding present. They store its small gas bottle in the back of the ute when they are travelling.
The shower is wonderfully inventive. It hangs outside off the porch and the water is warmed by a portable califont called an Aquacube Logic camp shower. Sandy has fashioned a surrounding curtain of many colours to create privacy.
“As well as the colourful shower curtain, I made a patchwork bed cover by cutting out squares made from every colour of the rainbow,” Sandy says. “It’s the eye-catcher of the interior decor along with the vibrantly coloured, rag mat on the floor. I didn’t paint the interior walls as the plywood they are made of is a lovely reddish colour, which was best left natural. To offset the walls, I painted the window surrounds and the ceiling beams teal.” It’s quite a different story on the exterior, of course, which Sandy painted in striking reds and blues that attract so much attention wherever the couple camp for the night. She believes vardos were built for the soul as their curvatures and arches convey a feeling of peace. “There are no straight lines in nature,” she says.
“We use the vardo to get away for one to two nights to have a rest from the old day-to-day but it’s not always restful,” laughs Phil. “Of course, people are intrigued and want to know the how and why, but there is another reason they gather around us; I am a keen didgeridoo musician. I have been playing this wonderful instrument for 29 years after gaining permission from Aboriginal people in Australia. I’m enjoying it even more now that Sandy plays a Rav Vast metal drum which is set in the same key as the didgeridoo. Whenever we play our instruments, the lovely mellow sound they create together attracts people like moths to a flame.
“Once or twice, we have come across people who don’t appreciate the old gypsy-house truck idea, and they have moved away when we have parked next to them. But that’s very rare.” Sandy and Phil take bicycles with them, and Ruby is certainly not going to be left behind on a ride. Sandy will often be seen pedalling along on her daisy-yellow bicycle with Ruby enjoying a top-level view from her perch in the basket attached to the handlebars.
It’s no wonder that when people come across Sandy and Phil and their attention-grabbing wagon, they want to know more. Maybe there’s a bit of gypsy in all of us. The vardo invokes a whisper of Romani history and a feeling of nostalgia for the simple, unshackled life of the wanderer.
