This is a great hobby, because you are effectively creating a mobile museum, for display wherever you wish.

It is not something you would do with a 1950’s house; you wouldn’t buy a nice original 1950’s house, fill it with goods from the era and then open it for public display. It’s too expensive and just plain impractical.

Not so with an old caravan, you can set it up for display wherever you can tow it, then at the end of the day, pack all the goods away, and put the caravan back into storage. It’s a great way to recreate the period.

The outside items can include things like old chairs, fold up table, kero lamp, kerosene tin, water container, old esky and the list goes on!

Collecting for this purpose results in running all over the countryside chasing what is basically “junk”.
It is not very expensive, a lot of the items, an old grocery tin, or packet of old soap for instance, are around the $5 mark, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less, depending on rarity and condition.
This is relatively cheap when compared to collecting say model cars, as I have done for years, where the price for a good model car ranges from about $40 to $200 plus!

Some of the camping items can be more expensive, for instance I paid $90 for a late 1940’s Coleman kerosene lamp in top condition, with the mantle still intact & working. A lot of camping items I have purchased for outside display have been cheap, but have required restoration, which is time consuming, but forms a valuable part of the hobby.
These items have been purchased in restorable condition from collectable or junk shops. One dealer got pissed off one day when I purchased an old wooden chair sitting at the front of her shop. It was the chair she used to sit on for smoko!

I have filled “Joker II” with collectables to the extreme!
If you sat down in 1958/9 and made a list of everything you need for a caravanning holiday, including food & groceries, the camera, torch, playing cards, magazines, shaver, perfume, thermos, pots & pans, cutlery etc, it is all there, I have collected it! I have not however collected any period clothing.

One item I purchased from the eastern states was a small unopened tin of “Tongala reduced cream”, c 1959.
I wasn’t overly impressed with the person I was dealing with and was not surprised when the tin arrived at my P O Box just in an Australia Post envelope, not in a padded bag, nor wrapped in bubble wrap or some similar protection. It was simply placed in the envelope & posted.
Anyway, the tin was punctured in transit.
You are no doubt familiar with the smell of “off cream”; well you should have smelt this stuff! It was absolutely putrid, and only about 42 years past it’s use by date, not that it had one!!

I focus on famous Australian brand name products that I identify from old magazine advertisements, and then set out to find the products. It is rewarding when I actually find a particular item, the thrill of the kill!
My family thinks I have some sort of problem in this regard, guess I could stop collecting and go to the pub or casino instead!