Taking the slow road
Reports.
Andy Cleverley and wife Amber Macintosh spend their days waking when they want, going where they want, and camping in some of the most beautiful spots in the country.
But their idyllic-sounding adventures with their two children aboard a converted school bus came from a very different place.
In the 2011 Christchurch quake they were trapped for about four hours on the 22nd floor of Hotel Grand Chancellor.
They tried to make their way out through the emergency exit.
‘‘People in front of us stopped and said, ‘there are no more stairs’, we looked over and it was just this sheer drop, 20 storeys down,’’ Cleverley said.
They used a chair to smash a window and waved sheets to draw attention to their whereabouts, but watched the city evacuate.
‘‘While we were in that room, there were lots and lots of aftershocks coming through, and nobody knew if the building was going to fall down or stay up, and with every aftershock we thought that was it really,’’ he said.
‘‘My thing was, if I got out of there I wanted to change my life, I didn’t want to sit in an office anymore, I just felt like it was a complete waste and if I died right then and there, I wasn’t happy with what I’d done with my life and it just felt like it needed to change.’’
They made it down to the 14th floor, and onto a neighbouring roof, and were rescued from there.
It took another five years, a post-traumatic stress breakdown for Cleverley and post-natal depression for Macintosh, before they acted on their mid-quake epiphany.
Cleverley spent 2016 converting an old school bus bought on Trade Me and the pair, along with their children, Jake, 6, and Daisy, 4, swapped corporate office jobs for life on the road.
The bus conversion was trialand-error; Cleverley had no building experience and relied on YouTube videos and Google. The bus has a full kitchen, which he had to install twice after he put the sink in the wrong position the first time, stained wood-panelling, fridge, bathroom, and bunks for the children.
The pair created a YouTube channel to document the journey and with more than 37,000 subscribers and more than 5000 fans and followers on Facebook, say their story is resonating with others.
They’ve been given funding from New Zealand On Air’s Skip Ahead programme to produce a three-episode documentary which will air on the channel in November.
It will share their experience of the earthquake, the aftermath, and the ‘‘silver lining’’ they found.
‘‘Showing that out of all of that, the tragedy, the mental health issues and stuff, there was a silver lining that came out of it. Showing that you can use that adversity for good, you can actually take it and make positive changes and end up in a better place than you were before,’’ Cleverley said.
The family travel the country, stopping at beaches, holiday spots, and cities, and make a living from their YouTube channel and subscription content provider Patreon.
‘‘I feel like a millionaire,’’ Cleverley said, despite living on a ‘‘shoe-string budget’’ and fraction of income they had in their previous jobs.
‘‘I don’t have anybody telling me what time I need to be somewhere, what time I need to eat my lunch. I just get up and do whatever I want. We don’t have a lot of money, but we have a lot of time.’’
The pair still work about 40 hours a week, filming, editing, and promoting their online content, but do it when and where they want.
They will home-school Jake through correspondence school, Te Kura, this year.
And while life on the bus has challenges – living in a small space, not being able to use a hairdryer, dealing with mechanical breakdowns and the odd broken toilet – Cleverley said the worst day in the bus was still ‘‘a thousand times better’’ than the best day at work.
Their travels have brought them to Nelson Tasman twice, and Cleverley said they ‘‘loved it’’, particularly because they climate as good for their solar panels.
‘‘We absolutely love Ruby Bay area, the Kina beach reserve, it’s stunning really and is one of those places around New Zealand where you can camp right on the waterfront’’.
Other favourite spots included Hokitika, the wider West Coast, and they’d particularly enjoyed Kohaihai, north of Karamea.
‘‘It’s like another world, you feel like you’re not even in New Zealand it’s like a tropical island paradise somewhere, it was just stunning, and you’re the only one on this huge beach ... it was one of the places that blew us away the most in the South Island.’’