Hi Roehm,
In my previous post I wasn't meaning to suggest that your Hunter Minor had been built in 1941, or even 1946, just that Caravan Park had been building vans well before 1941. However, your quote from Our Touring Past sent me to look for more information about the Hunter Minor model. Not that I didn't believe what Vantoura had said on OTP. I was just interested to see what else we could discover.
Looking at the very first Winser manual dated 1948, there is an advert from Caravan Park which lists four models:
- Superb de Luxe, "all metal"
- Hunter de Luxe
- Vagabond, 4-berth, and
- Litewate, 2-berth for 8 hp cars
The 1948 Winser also includes articles and pictures of the Superb and Hunter. (I reckon you should consider getting yourself a Superb at some stage - oh, hang on you've already had one of those!
)
The second edition of the Winser manual, which is dated 1948/49, does not include an advert for Caravan Park, but three of their models are described and illustrated in the manual:
- Superb
- Hunter
- Two-lite, 2-berth for 8 hp cars
I am guessing that the Two-lite was a new name for the previous Litewate, or possibly was a re-designed version of the Litewate. But anyway, no mention of the Hunter Minor yet...
The first reference I can find to the Hunter Minor in the newspapers is this advert from the
Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday, 1 February 1950 (p 14) which refers to the Hunter Minor as being the 'latest in design':
(Source: National Library of Australia
nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18145715 )
This advert was followed a couple of days later by a brief article in
The Farmer and Settler of Friday, 3 February 1950 (p 15) which quotes R J Rankin, the founder of Caravan Park, and mentions both the Hunter Junior and the Hunter Minor:
(Source: National Library of Australia
nla.gov.au/nla.news-article117402893 )
Both of these items from the press seem to imply that the Hunter Minor (and Junior) was a new or fairly new model, and seeing they were published in February 1950, this in turn seems to imply that the Hunter Minor may have been introduced in 1949. This especially since there is no mention of this model in the 1948 Winsers. So this is confirmation of the info from OTP.
So, as you've been suggesting, that means that your van can't be any older than 1949.
Just by the way, that's an interesting comment in The Farmer and Settler article about the NSW government discouraging caravan production. I wonder what that is referring to? Was it just that materials were scarce after WW II and the government didn't want them 'wasted' on 'frivolities' such as caravans? Or maybe the government was concerned that caravans would become cheap and nasty housing for returning soldiers and their families, as happened in the USA and the UK after the War?
As a little aside, Roehm, the Caravan Park advert in the first edition of Winser describes the Vagabond model as a "roadworthy all purpose caravan", which sort of implies that the other three models weren't roadworthy!! One hopes that wasn't the case! Maybe 'roadworthy' meant something different in 1948 compared to today? As a person who has spent some of his professional life interpreting ancient words in their cultural context for a modern audience,
what do you think 'roadworthy' means in this context?
Don Ricardo
(PS At some stage I'll copy some of this info onto the Carapark thread in the DHL section, together with some photos of your van, if that is OK?)
ALSO - have you noted this thread is now in the 'Members Photo Album' section?
