On the road…
On the road with Red Gypsy Lauren
An encounter of the best kind. First published summer 2014.
AT THE END of the third sentence of the first paragraph appear the words that were to launch Jack Kerouac to fame:
“With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road”.
On The Road, Kerouac’s 1957 novel based on real characters, real places and real events continues to stimulate fertile imaginations and brings a restlessness to readers. Why it comes to mind is that it aptly describes the life of a young woman I met in Tasmania.
The Red Gypsy
As I walked along the gravel driveway of Yvonne Gluyas’ home on the ridge which forms Launceston’s western margin, I noticed a vehicle parked among the old apple, apricot and pear trees. A young woman with long red hair stepped out.
First, a brief aside. Yvonne is an old friend who invited me to visit while I was in town. She was a Launceston caterer at the time I wrote this story in 2014. She is now a performance poet who organises performance poetry events around the state. I can best describe her as a self-made, quietly stubborn and occasionally outrageous woman. Sure, she has mellowed a little over the years but the rebellious young woman has turned into a practitioner of rebellious ageing.
That woman stepping out of the Coaster van… Lauren was her name. Lauren Fisher. Better known a Red Gypsy Lauren. That is an appropriate name because Lauren and her four young children live the life of the stereotypical gypsy, a life on the road.
A can-do nomad
Lauren was sitting on the grass, electric drill in hand assembling a small table when I wandered over to say hello. We exchanged pleasantries as people new to each other do and talked awhile. I quickly gained the impression that this was a can-do sort of woman, a desirable attribute for someone who lives the nomadic life while caring for young children.
Lauren is not what you would call tall. Her complexion is that paleness you find in red-haired people. She is softly spoken and has a gentle personality that overlays an internal toughness. Not a toughness of the aggressive type, more of the quietly determined, ability-to-cope type. Here, I felt, is a woman seldom fazed by the challenges of her family’s mobile lifestyle.
I asked her if she minded my taking some photos for my blog. She didn’t, inviting me to look around inside her home on the road.
Coasters
The Toyota Coaster was designed as a minibus. Spend time on the road and you soon discover it is a model popular for mobile living. It is smaller than those bulky motor homes we encounter on the highways, but larger than the VW and HiAce vans popular with travellers. The spaciousness of the vehicle’s interior lends it to conversion as a camper.
Many a camping area is host to Coasters imaginatively refitted as temporary or permanent homes on the road. Like that of Kate and Lewis whom I met on the mid-north coast of NSW. They are on a long road trip in their Coaster in which they carry their snowboards, surfboards and a couple mountain bikes. When I met them beside the beach at Bonnie Hills on the NSW Mid-North Coast, where a womens’ surfing competition was underway, the couple had just spent part of the winter in the skifields at Thredbo before following the road north into spring and summer. Then there was Anne, a woman in late-middle-age whom I met on the roadside in Sydney as she cleaned out her and her husband’s Coaster. They have a home nearby on the Sydney coast but spend a lot of time away, touring. Anne told me they were about to leave on another road trip, this one into Victoria.
Like those other travellers, Lauren’s Coaster demonstrated a well-thought-out use of limited space. There’s a bed at the rear, a large chest of drawers along one side, fold-out bunks for the children and the other fittings that make the minibus a mobile family home. It’s functional. It’s homely. It works.
A van is not a house and it brings its own challenges unknown to those who have never lived in one. This was something Lauren discovered when, driving along a gravel road on the Tasman Peninsula, she drove into a roadside ditch. Then there’s coping with the heat, the cold and the rain. Such challenges Lauren seems to take in her stride. You have only to read her blog to see that here is a psychologically, emotionally and physically resilient woman. Countering the misadventures are the good things, the people and places that the roads Lauren and her daughters take lead them to.
I think it was at some forest festival or perhaps the annual Tasmanian Rainbow Gathering where Yvonne met Lauren. Yvonne ran the tea tent at those festivals. It is how they found common ground that intrigues me because they are very different. Lauren is thoughtful and quiet, at least that’s my impression from our first meeting. Yvonne is also thoughtful but more extroverted and outspoken.
Adventure awaits
Befitting her gypsy nom-de-road, Lauren has toured widely on the Australian mainland as well as in Tasmania. Staying with the friends she makes provides respite from constant movement and provides time for her and her children to reorganise their van.
When she is passing through town, Lauren sometimes parks among Yvonne’s fruit trees. It’s the opportunity for cleaning, repacking, taking a break and making repairs, just as I discovered her doing, drill in hand, that day we met.
Where is she now? I don’t know, however I’m sure she will be heading towards more adventures in this, Lauren’s and her daughters life on the road.
Lauren documents her life-as-journey on her blog, ‘Sparkling Adventures’ http://www.sparklingadventures.com/index.php?c=travel-in-tasmania&s=article
