I always get strange ideas when I'm trapped inside and it's raining, so onto Grey Nomads to use some time, anyway it's good company.

House boat!!!! what if .... some one built a barge like a thingy bob gigeroo gadget that you could drive your car and camper or bus or whatever onto it and go cruising and not have to worry about your stuff parked up where your not.

It could even be set up so it could be driven by the drive wheels of your rig what ever it is, like a set of rollers they use to dyno cars, and the front wheels could secure into pivioting gutters to steer it all, might be an idea to strap the whole show down so as not to drive off the end har har.

Attached are a couple of cottage boats I have taken a likeing to.

There are Cara-boats. You still have to park your vehicle somewhere, but the ' van turns into a Houseboat. Have to go out now, but when I get back later, will try and find the website for you. Cheers, xina.

gee!! I hope the rain stops soon for sanitys sake, MINE!!!! you idiot, the thing would sink!!! cars are for roads and boats are for water, however there are some nuts er! um! clever people out there who have aleady done this with limited success

dave06 wrote:

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gee!! I hope the rain stops soon for sanitys sake, MINE!!!! you idiot, the thing would sink!!! cars are for roads and boats are for water, however there are some nuts er! um! clever people out there who have aleady done this with limited success

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Rubbish!
 A car, bus, or camper max weight would be no more than 6 tonne, how many trucks, cars, buses do they put on a river ferry?
I'm talking about a  barge thingy aprox 5x10 metres drawing around 200-300 mil

 

Any Marine Engineers out there who could point me in the right direction?

well go get a barge and start welding, has it stopped raining yet, bloody paddles and gutters for steering, geez!!! talk about whacky races!!

You can Google Aqua-van for one, and another is bringaboatalong.com.au Cheers, xina.

dave06 wrote:

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well go get a barge and start welding, has it stopped raining yet, bloody paddles and gutters for steering, geez!!! talk about whacky races!!

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You woud be still traveling around with a horse and cart if it wasen't for thinkers like Henery Ford.

 

actually we hired a horse and gypsy wagon and toured through the Barossa a few years ago it was the most fantastic two weeks we have had, fantastic little break from snivilisation henry ford (correct me if I'm wrong) didnt try to combine boats and cars did he, he was the father of mass production, nothing more, nothing less, the concept of the car was already in place when he came on the scene so when are you going into mass production with your wet bum mobile lol!

I think ford did  build an amphibious vehicle Dave, the yanks used it through the later part of the 2nd W.W. 
But if you don't know engugh about river boats or barges don't laugh so loud, as there are some already on the Murray in S.A. drive on drive off, I'll see if I can dig some pic's out for you, one bloke has used an old red gum hull off a ferry and has got a caravan and car on it with a few tomato and veg plants in boxes along the sides.
Maybe you havent seen as much of the country as you should mate. 

Yeah I do recall seeing one on the TV that was "revolutionary" in that it was a punt style of thing that you drove you're vehicle onto and the driving wheels of the car sat on rollers - start the engine, engage gear and the rollers drove via a hidden contrivance the paddle wheels at the sides, novel but practical?

A quick google search bought up the infamous aussie Aquavan, a houseboat/caravan combo but wait there is more they are prepared to sell the patent and moulds to some sucker, I mean enterpraneur game enough to take the market on....
http://www.aquavan.com.au/

-- Edited by Basil Faulty at 11:20, 2009-03-07

Hey Basil.
I tend to think Fiber Glass is not a good medium to build with for the river, as the snags take their toll, as do the chops and spuds

nope certainly havent seen as much of the country as I would like/will be seeing, concentrated on the centre and outback areas, kimberleys and central east as well as west coast, and some of the top end so I am probably not up with all river traffic but I have seen the barges on the murray as well as the museum photos, and all the various floatation devices, I live about 2 hours out of morgan and I am a regular visitor there and all up and down the murray, but given another two years and I will certainly see a lot more of our fantastic country henry ford was the master behind the assembly line technique, he did not invent anything himself the vehicle which you elude to is called the ford gpa, placed in production for the second world war, designed by henry fords team of experts, henry ford did not design this himself it can be found here http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Jeep_Man/GPA.htm

I'm not realy into the fine print Dave, I think old Henry was wearing a wooden overcoat when GPA was built, but I think it was Willies design and ford took up the slack and got the lions share of the contracts leaving Willies left to building the GPT.

We could have bumped into each other around Morgan, I spent quite a lot of time on the river from Swan Hill down stream catching fish.
Did Paddy Hogg live there for a while?

we have relations that live in morgan, ralph and raeline bowden, ralph was a senior plant operator on the no1 pumpstation at morgan for 43 years, we also have a lot of freinds that live up and down the murray, I cant recall a paddy hogg but that doesnt mean to say he wasnt there, our rear neighbor is a fanatic on river boats (steamers mainly) and a good freind of ours (rodney hobbs) builds scale replicas of them all, his models command very high prices and can be seen in many museums up and down the murray we usually enjoy chasing all the river rambles that start in murray bridge and end up in morgan, where music and drinking and entertainment goes on all weekend, if you can, go and see it, fantastic, just look up "river ramble" on the net, about 30 of us get together for those fantastic weekends, we have travelled the murray up to its source on one trip, fantastic month it was, I would like to do it again, we also followed the murray to its outflow and that trip was not so good (very dry at its outpouring) actually thinking a bit about it now, there was a fellow who tried to entangle his vehicle with a barge type thing with paddles and all that stuff, took two days to get the car out of the water when he didnt fasten the thing to the banks well enough, that was up by waikerie somewhere

And theres the barge on the Jardine, just to say goodbye to Bamaga, the abos hit you for $80 for a trip of 50 mtrs, Might be you can earn a quid or two

$80 for 50 mtrs jeez $1.60 a mtr,  I thought we were already paying the rent!
I often wonder what things would have been like if our blokes in New Guinea didn't stop the nips.

Road Ranger wrote:

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$80 for 50 mtrs jeez $1.60 a mtr,  I thought we were already paying the rent!
I often wonder what things would have been like if our blokes in New Guinea didn't stop the nips.

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Would rather not think about it.

John

 

A while back I put in a tender to buy an ex police barge powered by 2 cats, they used it on Morten Bay to police the islands My idea was to put the small Suzuki Vitara on the front and build the remainder of the deck and wheel house into a 2 story house boat the lower story would also accommodate a 4 mt tinny on trailer . It was going present some problems in moving it by road when I wanted a change of scenery/ River / Bay / State Long story but i missed out and now some mission has it running into the ground or should that be aground.

Whoo! what a way to go, and with Pussypillerpower what size barg was it, and what was the molded depth?

Will drag out the finer details, if the wife hasn't tossed it when we missed the tender . I 've seen a lot of late model oyster barges around that would be great to convert will send a pic later of one I've taken a liking to. 4 mm alloy plate , bloody near bullet proof

The $80 Fee at the Jardine Crossing includes whatever permits you need for that area. Cheers, xina.

Thanks for that, I was just talking to Zina about this.

I always try to make more than one use of any machinery, and if I could drive a truck and trailer onto a barge utilise the prime mover's 550 h.p. to run a genset, it's already got it's own reduction box and all I would need to do is disconect the propshaft and couple it to the gen set to power a couple of electric motors
I could use the P.T.O. for stearing. so if I ran he engine @1600 RPM in low third it should work. what do you think.
I've operated 100 tonne cranes on barges so a 26 tonne truck and trailer should be a cake walk.