Courtney Caravans (South Yarra, Vic)

[Don Ricardo]

Courtney Caravans

Manufactured by Ansair
655 Chapel Street, South Yarra, Vic

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1956 Courtney advertisement and publicity:







(Source: Keith Winser, Australian Caravan & Touring Manual for 1956, pp 14, 99 & 81)

One feature of the Courtney was that it had an all aluminium roof, the implication being that the sides , front and back of the van were bondwood.

As indicated in the advertisement, Courtney vans were constructed by Ansair, manufacturers of Ansett buses which from memory were long distance coaches. Ansair also built caravans in conjunction with the Hendy Trailer and Caravan Company - see here

It appears that during the mid-50's several large Australian transport engineering companies tried to break into the caravan construction business. One of these was Ansair. Another was Freighter, better known for their trailers. Neither Courtney vans nor Freighter vans are well known, so it appears that they achieved only limited success in the caravan building business.

Information about Freighter caravans can be found here

[Don Ricardo]

The following caravan seen at Cora Lynn Country Car Show in October 2008 sported a Courtney Caravans nameplate at the rear:



The side profile is different to that of the Ansair built Courtney shown in the advert at the top of this thread, but it is also evidently a later model because of the aluminium windows.

Does anybody have any more info about the caravan at Cora Lynn?

[Deleted]

sure do Don R

Hello Mark

Thankyou for talking to me the other night. I have attached two photo's of our 1954 Courtney caravan, build no. 111 in South Yarra Victoria. We have not been able to find out any information on the company as yet or come across any other vans from that company.

The van we bought from a family that had owned it from new, and the son who now lives in WA said that his father bought an FJ holden to tow their new van. It had been well looked after and kept under cover but the lower back section had a small amount of rot which we had to replace. We still have a few things to finish off but basically it is nearly all together.

We took the van to Cora Lynn last October and will be taking it again this year on 4th October.


Kind regards

Dennis and Karen-Anne Jones
[e-mail]












Mark

[Don Ricardo]

Further photos of Courtney caravan, serial number 111, when it was listed on Gumtree in August 2014:









The advertiser stated that the van was a 1954 model. However, given that this van has aluminium framed windows, and the Courtney caravan shown in the 1956 Winser (see post commencing this thread) had wooden windows, I think we can safely say that this van was certainly built later than 1956. Judging by the style of the windows I would guess somewhere between 1957 and 1959.

Don Ricardo