Northern Caravans --- West Essendon, Vic.

1959 Northern caravan advertised on Ebay, November 2010:



















Note that this caravan has the same unusual front profile with a bay window shown in the 1961 Winser advert for Northern Caravans displayed in the first post on this thread.

Note also the grey marble style laminex around the galley area. At first sight I thought that this was the result of an update or reno at some point. However, if you look at the pic of the inside of the van in the advert commencing the thread it is apparent that it is the same laminex pattern, so it appears to be original.

Don Ricardo

Hi All

We are the new owners of an old Northern Caravan. She is beautiful. Lovely embossed aluminium and with original grey and white swirl laminate table and bench tops.

I'd love to know more about her history. When I googled it lead me to this thread.

Thanks for your help

Oh that's a pity. I was hoping another member of this forum would also own one. We are looking at maintaining her original flair but were unsure whether to polish her up to shine or not.

Thanks for your help. Our family of 5 are looking forward to many years of fun. Next step is to find an annex. The original didn't survive sadly.

Hi Nikki,

Congratulations on the acquisition of your Northern caravan - very exciting to hear about it, because it is not a caravan brand we know all that much about. However, as far as I have been able to discover so far, Northern caravans were only produced for a relatively short period from the very late 50's to the very early 60's. So I am thinking that your van is from around that period.

Does your van look like one or other of the vans in the two adverts above? Is yours a tandem or a single axle?

I note that the vans in the adverts, as well as the van in Seeshell's photos above, have a very distinctively shaped door, where the top corner of the opening (ie non-hinged) side of the door is curved, while all the other corners are right angles. Is your door similar? I can't think of any other brand of caravan that had a similar shaped door.

If you'd like to post some photos of your van, we might be able to tell you more - and of course we'd be very interested to see your van too. You can do that by (1) posting photos from Photobucket, Flickr or one of the similar online storage websites (instructions in the 'Forum Guidelines & Helpful Hints' section of the forum), or (2) using the Attachment button in the 'create post' window, or (3) emailing the photos to someone like me who will be happy to post the photos for you (just click on my forum name in blue in the left hand panel of this post which will give you my email address). Lots of options!

I'm sure your family will have lots of very happy times with the van.

Don Ricardo

Hi Nikki and everyone,

Following are the photos of Nikki's Northern tandem caravan that she has sent me to post on her behalf, which I am very happy to do:













And this photo shows the embossed aluminium cladding, including a little section on the left which has been polished:



In addition to seeing the photos of Nikki's vans, I've also found some additional information on Northern caravans in the 1960 Winser caravan manual:

• At that stage, Northern was producing two models - a 13 ft model and a 15 ft 6 in model. The 13 ft model is the 1959 van which was advertised on Ebay in 2010 and shown in my post above. Nikki's van is the 15 ft 6 in model, which was named the Aristocrat model.
• In the 1960 Winser manual, the top opening edge of the door was a right angle, not a curve as seen in the vans in the 1961 and 1962 adverts shown above. Nikki's van has a right angle corner on its door. That indicates to me her van is a 1959/60 model. I say 1959/60 because my understanding is that Winser's caravan manuals were produced and sold late in the year before the year they're dated, ie the 1960 issue would have been released in late 1959. Therefore to have a photograph included in the 1960 issue, the van would need to have been produced in 1959.
• All of the Northern vans we've seen, including Nikki's, use the same charcoal marble laminex, so that was obviously part of their design style.

So, Nikki, it seems as if your van is a 1959 or 1960 Northern Aristocrat! If you like I can post the photos of your van in a new thread in the 'Member's Photo Album' section of the forum, and you can then tell us more about the van and its history, and also do updates as you do your restoration.

Don Ricardo