Bring our baby home
HEAVILY pregnant Sally Williams planned to bring her newborn home from hospital in her treasured campervan.
But thieves put paid to that dream when the van was stolen last week.
‘‘All my hard work is gone, it’s difficult to take,’’ the Mt Eden resident says.
‘‘When I saw it was gone I went cold and my stomach flipped over.’’
It took 18 months for Sally to convert the Toyota Hiace van into a campervan.
The London native is an artist and has always enjoyed making things.
‘‘I learned to use a saw when I was 4, which my mother wasn’t happy about,’’ she says.
‘‘When my husband was at work, I spent the evenings and the weekends building things for the van – in the lounge and on the deck.’’
Sally moved to New Zealand with her husband Huw eight years ago.
‘‘Ever since we’ve just loved travelling around and finding new places. We just loved being in the outdoors and discovering New Zealand,’’ she says.
Huw and Sally married in 2007 and Huw’s parents planned to rent a campervan when they visited New Zealand for the wedding. Sally and Huw offered to build them one instead.
‘‘It was an absurd thing for them to have risked really, but we did it,’’ Sally says.
She started work on her own van, nicknamed Dita Van Bach, about 18 months ago. Its curtains are made from a blanket bought in Mexico and an ultrasound picture of their daughter, who is due in April, hangs on the wall.
‘‘We don’t own a house so it’s the first ‘home’ we have owned,’’ Sally says.
It was also the couple’s only vehicle.
Waitangi Day was the first anniversary of Sally and Huw being granted permanent residency in New Zealand. They were getting ready to leave for a celebratory trip in the van when they realised it was missing from their driveway.
Sally thinks the van might have been mistaken for a tradesman’s vehicle and is hoping that whoever took it will leave it somewhere to be found.
She is trying to be philosophical.
‘‘Everything happens for a reason so we will wait to see what this one is,’’ she says.
A Facebook page has been set up to help find the van. Go to facebook.com and search ‘‘Dita Van Bach’’.