Lambert telescopic caravan (Wayville, SA)

[Don Ricardo]

Hi all,

Andrew Woodmansey (Woody99) has provided me with some items about a telescopic caravan manufactured in the early 930's by Mr A (Alic) Lambert in Adelaide, South Australia.

The first information we have of the Lambert caravans is the following photos published in the Adelaide News on Monday, 3 April 1933 (page 6):

(Source: National Library of Australia nla.gov.au/nla.news-article129278744 )

As indicated, the photos show two Lambert vans with the top half lowered for travel, and raised while in use.  The design of the Lambert vans followed the style of the earlier UK Shadow and Eccles telescopic caravans.  The journey referred to in the caption took the caravans from Adelaide to Sydney and back.

The following article printed in the Broken Hill Barrier Miner newspaper on Wednesday, 16 August 1933 (page 3) reported on a second journey in 1933:

(Source: National Library of Australia nla.gov.au/nla.news-article48440515

Layout altered to increase readability on the forum.)

The article confirms that the caravans were actually constructed by Mr Lambert himself, and were 4-berth in design.  It also provides a description of the internal fittings and the fact that the vans included electric lights powered from the car battery.  The vans were 9 ft long and 5 ft 2 1/2 in high when collapsed and 8 ft 6 in high when erected.  They weighed 8 cwt (406 kilograms) unladen, which was relatively light given the additional framing and mechanism that would be required to raise and lower the top half.

The second journey reported in the Barrier Miner took the Lamberts and their friends from Adelaide to Broken Hill, with the apparent intention of traveling on to Wilcannia, Cobar, Bourke and Oxley.  This excursion seems to have generated quite a lot of interest, at least from the press, because the above article (without the photo) was repeated in a number of different rural newspapers from August right through to October 1933.  What is amusing is that the wording of many of the articles is almost identical, although the identity of the person who was shown over the caravan differed from town to town.

It appears that the Lambert caravans were built at least partially with a commercial purpose in mind, because we find this advert for caravans for hire from Lambert's Service Station in Wayville (a suburb of Adelaide) published in the Adelaide Advertiser on Tuesday, 23 January 1934 (page 16):

(Source: National Library of Australia nla.gov.au/nla.news-article36472540 )

The Lambert vans were not widely advertised as far as I can discover, so it is hard to know how many caravans they built or how active they were in promoting them for hire.

The following advert for a second hand caravan was placed in the Adelaide Advertiser on Wednesday, 9 September 1936 (page 3):

(Source: National Library of Australia nla.gov.au/nla.news-article48176638 )

Of course we can't know whether this was one of the hire vans being sold off, or be totally sure that it was even a Lambert caravan for sale, because the Lambert Service Station business included buying and selling second hand cars, and possibly caravans.  However, the evidence does indicate that Alic Lambert did construct at least several caravans which were used for some fairly extensive traveling.

Don Ricardo