Lee lived on a bus as a kid. Now he’s converting one for his young daughters

For Lee Drennan, the idea of moving into a bus with his little family isn’t that wild. It’s a lifestyle he experienced when he was a child, travelling New Zealand with his parents and brothers in a 1960s double-decker Bedford.

Now a father himself, Lee wants to recreate that freedom with his own kids. When he broached the idea with his wife Michelle, he got nothing but encouragement.

“It turned out she’d already been looking at American school buses for a while,” Lee says. “She was all keen.”

For the past 18 months the Drennans have been tinkering away on an old Nissan Civilian school bus, while simultaneously juggling life with their daughters, two-year-old Billie and eight-month-old Fern.

Now, with only a few finishing touches to do, they’re planning to leave their home in Bunbury, south of Perth, later in the year to live full-time in the bus, which they’ve nicknamed Neville.

The couple has transformed the bus’ interior themselves with the help of YouTube and advice from fellow bus-lifers in the social media community. They ripped out the old vinyl floor and grimy seat covers, as well as most of the actual seats, leaving only two in the cab plus one in the back where the girls’ car seats are attached.

The new colour scheme is light to make the most of the sunshine that pours through the bus’ big side windows. Wood panelling on the walls and ceiling give Neville a chilled cabin vibe.

Installing the panelling themselves on the bus’ curved ceiling proved tricky when the couple realised the curves in the cab didn’t follow the lines through the rest of the bus, giving them months of trial-and-error headaches until they got it right.

No matter the job, eldest daughter Billie has always been involved.

She was a baby when the conversion started, “a good age to just sit on the floor and not move while we smashed out heaps of it,” remembers Lee, but now she’s a busy toddler who loves to get on her plastic tools and help with the build.

“She thinks she’s being helpful – whatever we do, she wants to be involved,” Michelle says. “Lee will be measuring up and [Billie’s] got her own piece of wood, her own pencil, her own hammer.”

Work on the bus slowed somewhat when Fern was born in October 2019. “We’ve had to lower our expectations a bit because we obviously can’t work as quickly as we would normally work if we didn’t have the little ones under our feet,” says Michelle.

“We’ve learned to be very flexible,” Lee adds.

As you’d expect, many decisions revolved around getting the bus safe and comfortable for the two littlest nomads. Originally Lee built a single bed for Billie at the front of the bus, but then added an optional extension to create a double bed for when she needs mum or dad to lie with her.

“Wherever the kids land, we’ll just work around them,” Michelle says. There’s also a toy box within arm’s reach, and the bed converts to a couch for daytime use.

The couple’s queen-size bed lies at the back of the bus surrounded by windows. Many a renovation decision was made lying on that bed with their feet hanging out in the open air.

With such a small living space, there are provisions for when the girls are inside napping – Lee and Michelle have set up an outdoor coffee bench to indulge in, which hangs on ropes from the bus’ side.

Life on the road won’t mean going without good food, though – they’ve also installed an IKEA kitchen with a full-sized fridge for stocking up before more remote travels.

A bathroom, discreetly hidden by a barn door, has a Thetford Porta Potti toilet, which may be upgraded to a composting toilet in the future. An outdoor shower set-up will be used while travelling.

A few more jobs lie ahead before the bus is entirely liveable, including installing water tanks, a reverse-cycle airconditioner and a solar set-up big enough to keep everything running.

“Ours is a little bit more involved than most because we’ve got kids,” Michelle says. “A lot of people are travelling on a smaller solar set-up and they don’t have hot water.”

After months of sitting in the driveway pretending to be on holidays during COVID-19-related restrictions, the family have begun taking short local trips to test out their new lifestyle. So far, the girls have taken to bus-life with relative ease. With a dad who loved it himself, maybe it’s in their blood.

“It was full of good memories,” Lee says of his childhood. “That’s kind of what we want to redo, especially now that we’ve got kids.”