‘It’s the dream life’: They thought they’d bought a piece of junk, now they’re in no hurry to get home

Sunday, 28 June 2026

Peter and Cheryl Mitchell have spent 20 years converting a 1977 Bedford bus into their mobile home for touring New Zealand.

The vehicle features a large bed, shower, toilet, kitchen and living area.

The Christchurch couple are currently six months into their longest journey, a 3500km circumnavigation of the North Island.

From a distance it looks like a regular old bus, the kind that’s long graced the nation’s roads as a prosaic form of mass transportation.

It sits beside a hedgerow on a motor camp in Napier, and as you get closer you see ‘Their Inheritance’ written above the windscreen where you’d usually see the destination.

Getting closer still you can see a couple busily moving about inside, shifting items and readying their home on wheels for a stay of indeterminate length.

They are the Mitchells; Peter, 69, and Cheryl, 64. They live in Christchurch and have been touring the North Island for the past six months. They’ve come to Napier to meet the man who sold them the bus 20 years ago.

They bought it from Ian McNair for $12,000 in 2006. He had sold plenty of old buses, but never seen anyone else convert one into a mobile home.

They only discovered that when they called him ahead of their arrival in the area, on the off-chance he was still in Napier.

He was, and in early June, he met the Mitchells and saw what they’d achieved with the bus from what had been an inauspicious beginning.

Since he was a teenager working in a Hokitika garage, Peter knew he wanted to own a bus one day. He can recall the afternoon he first saw one of the new ‘non-rounded’ Bedfords turn up with a load of passengers.

“I leaned against a counter and just watched as people got off. It was a marvel,” he says.

“It takes all sorts,” chimes in Cheryl.

Around 25 years ago the couple decided the time was right to start looking for a bus. They wanted to see more of the country, the kids had long left home and they’d received an inheritance (explaining their bus’ name), meaning they could afford it.

Years of looking for the perfect model ensued. They really wanted a used Japanese bus, but they were too expensive, so they took to scanning for other options. Eventually they found GCT772 for sale in Napier.

It was a 1977 Bedford, assembled in New Zealand, and used as a school bus in Paraparaumu for many years, before becoming a passenger bus for various outfits around the country.

It was the type of bus Peter had marvelled at all those years before in Hokitika.

They flew to Napier, met Ian, and took the bus for a drive around the block.

“There was only the driver’s seat, so Cheryl and I stood up as Ian drove,” recalls Peter. “We couldn’t hear anything wrong. I had a really, really, good look over it. Couldn’t find any rust anywhere. So, we bought it.”

Part of the deal was that Ian would drive it to Wellington and put it on the ferry. The couple picked it up in Picton, put some diesel in it and off they went.

“We didn’t get past the first hill out of Picton. It stopped. So back to a garage we went,” says Peter. “It turned out all the gunk in the bottom of the fuel tank - about 30 years of gunk - had blocked the filters.”

Eventually they got the bus home. The first task was stripping out the inside panelling.

“We did that and then we just cried. The framing was completely rusted out. In places there was nothing left of it,” Peter says.

“Our initial thought was that we’d bought a piece of junk. Then we sort of got over the shock and started looking for someone to fix it.”

They couldn’t find anyone to take the job on so Peter decided to have a go himself. He borrowed a welder from a neighbour, began toying around and soon became sufficiently proficient to weld in new framing.

So began the restoration. Weekends and evenings after work revolved around the project. They did nearly all of it themselves, with the odd bit of specialist help here and there. The bus is kitted out with a large bed, shower, toilet, kitchen and living area.

Their first trip away was in October, 2009. They went to Queenstown.

Since then there have been many more. The couple bring out a map of New Zealand, covered in stars showing the many places they’ve stayed over the years.

Much of the bus is original. The engine was replaced during the Covid lockdown because they had time on their hands, and there are always ongoing improvements and maintenance.

“It’s still not 100% finished, and probably never will be,” laughs Peter. “I built a 2000 square foot [186sqm] house once with my father and a friend. That took six months. The bus took three years, and is still a work in progress.”

They don’t know how many kilometres the bus has travelled because the odometer was replaced a while back, but they say it will be “easily” more than 1 million.

They’ve made countless jaunts around the South Island. Then late last year they hit the road on their longest trip to date; a circumnavigation of the North Island (covering 3500km so far).

The couple’s purpose from the outset was “to build it so we can go on holiday and forget to come home”.

“It's taken us 20 years to do that. But we've finally got there, and that's what we're doing now. We’ve got about seven weeks left before we get home,” says Peter.

They stay for between one and seven nights in any one place, and make a point of having no deadlines or commitments.

The bus tows a compact 4WD behind it, meaning they shoot off on day trips and access sites the bus wouldn’t reach.

“Six months sounds like a long time, but it’s not,” says Peter. “We’ve seen so much, so many places, and met so many people, but it’s flown by. It’s the dream life, it really is.”