Sandman and sub cultures

[playwme]

I grew up in a small country town. There were 3 vans in town. One was mine, and I bought one of the others after it went up in flames.

[ambientgoat]

I also got into cars in the late 90s in adelaide as well. The panel van was very much a tradie or a surfy car. I think this is why I still think it's a tradie van when it's white.

Back then van's weren't that cool tho, everyone wanted a ute. In a dark colour, with a twin headlight front, race buckets, gts guards, stateman interior and a v8.

Since I was getting my car loan through a very helpful dad he was having none of this van or ute buisness. So I ended up with a rust free but very ugly brown wagon which I loved.

[Q set]

Mid 70's, small central west NSW town, I can't say there were too many Holden pannos about. The local tank builder/ plumber had a ice blue Panno with stripes which always had a huge load of pipes on custom full length racks. You would sometimes see him getting around with a couple of smallish corrugated overhead tanks sitting up high on the racks. Dunno if his wheels were a sandman, but I do remember the stripes. There was a rough drifter that got around for years and years. It had an incident with a roo somewhere along the line and the grill was replaced with a poorly cut and installed chunk of 500 mm mesh. It was a 'local' car and whenever I head home, I would always see it in the main outside the Railway Hotel.
My cousin from Forbes (yep, with a good mow and a paisley wardrobe) had a nice nice nice HZ burgundy van with a fully decked and shagged interior and a spade shaped partition entrance. It was the first car I heard that had was stolen and I don't think he ever got it back. This was in the very early 80's. I remember my aunt telling Dad that my cousin said he was never going to sink his heart into any vehicle again after he lost it. She was right, he never had anything flash after that.:(:(:(:(

[jennie285]

My cousin from Forbes (yep, with a good mow and a paisley wardrobe) had a nice nice nice HZ burgundy van with a fully decked and shagged interior and a spade shaped partition entrance. It was the first car I heard that had was stolen and I don't think he ever got it back. .:(:(:(:(

Dean who was that maybe I knew him, Forbes is where I lived from 74-83, and BTW Rodney bought our original Sandman from Tony Caroll motors in Grenfell in 1981 2nd owner....(holden dealer on corner Jims trim is behind it)

--- Updated ---

those of you that never got to experience a packed single screen drive-in with the back 2 rows filled with vans - well, i just pity you. It was the best times i ever had

Totally agree we all used sit on bean bags on on the tailgate etc. it was the norm in all towns especially the country towns where there was nothing else to do....