The converted bus and Abby’s dog in the drivers seat.
The old No. 812 bus to Southland doesn’t normally take a detour into Victoria’s high country, but one has spent the past three years parked in Hill End as a tiny home weekender.
It used to do the Heath Hill run to the shopping plaza in Melbourne, and before that it was a school bus.
And while it’s still taking passengers, these days they’re the ones travelling to the bus which has had a $15,000 overhaul — with a lot of the materials and tools bought at Bunnings.
RELATED: Victorian family who lived in train after bushfire list unique home for sale
Melb family turns $20k into $120k in a few months
Vic home owner unearths hidden backyard gold mine
Owner Abby bought the old bus “from a guy out the back of Morwell” via Facebook Market Place.
“The plan all along was to convert it,” she said.
“I was originally looking for a caravan, and they didn’t seem big enough, and then I saw this pop up.
“I’ve always been good at looking at different things, like a bus or a van, and working out what I could turn it into. So it was just thinking about where the inlets and outlets need to go for water and where they would fit.”
She then spent about a year and $15,000 converting it into her own custom-made weekend getaway, complete with a bathroom, a shower and bedroom.
A kitchen in the bus comes complete with a gas oven and stove.
The bedroom comes with a fairly impressive view, but you can always fire up the bus and change the outlook if you want.
Abby with the bus after she acquired it.
“I did pretty much 98 per cent of the work, with my dad helping with some things,” she said.
“So I do know my way around a Bunnings, and I also had a bit from Robot Building Supplies.”
Abby even converted a couple of shipping palettes into a front deck.
While old bits of the bus are still on show, like the hand rails overhead, newly added features like a wood-fired heater, a stone-topped kitchen and even a barn door for the bathroom have given it a much more comfortable vibe than the original fit out.
“It’s fully kitted out, it’s got a bathroom and a bedroom and a kitchen, and the hot water and the stove are run off gas, and the rest is hooked up to electricity,” she said.
Her father, who has a license to drive such vehicles, dropped it off at the 2386 Willow Grove Rd, Hill End, property — and it’s staying there as part of the addresses planned $330,000-$363,000 sale.
Renovations inside the bus as it all came together.
The bathroom hosts a shower and toilet.
Views from the bus and the property extend for a long way into the surrounding foothills.
On a 2073sq m farm zoned site that’s about 120km from Southland Shopping Centre, about an hour and 50 minutes if you take the express bus, it’s been used as a weekender for the past three years by Abby and her friends and family while they’re heading to the area for fishing or snow play up on nearby Mt Baw Baw.
“I haven’t been charging a bus fare for family,” she admitted.
But Abby’s not ruling out the chance for the next owner to do so.
In addition to the bus stop the property comes with a chook run and a large shed Abby reckons is long enough to fit the bus into – though without the doors or roof height to test the theory. There’s also fencing for horses and a fire pit.
Abby said she was selling up as she needed something bigger, a house she could live in full time, though a double-decker bus was on her wishlist.
Abby working on the bus conversion that became a family weekender.
The shed on the property offers a substantive additional space to spread out into.
The block is just the right size that a few sheep could keep the lawn under control.
“It would be wicked to do one, but unfortunately there aren’t too many around,” she said.
Gippsland Property Sales’ Mel Ahearn is handling the “interesting little property” and said with views and a reasonable drive to Moe or Warragul, not to mention its proximity to Mt Baw Baw, the property was a great little getaway.
Ms Ahearn added that the shed could easily be upgraded as a rumpus room-style space or an entertaining zone, and that she was anticipating interest from people looking for their own eye-catching weekender or even those considering an Airbnb.
While buses weren’t uncommon on properties in the area, she said this was the first time she’d seen one as the main accommodation — and that it certainly seemed to work.
Sign up to the Herald Sun Weekly Real Estate Update. Click here to get the latest Victorian property market news delivered direct to your inbox.
MORE: Tigers great Dustin Martin sells Melbourne apartment