Publisher's Synopsis
'Vantastic' takes a lively look at one of New Zealand's most popular traditional holiday pursuits - caravanning. Packed with never-before-published photographs, interviews and memorabilia, it captures the wonderful feeling freedom and security unique to the 'home on wheels' in the period when Kiwis were in love with their freewheeling slice of home at the beach. Beautifully designed by leading designer Neil Pardington, it will stir the memories of anyone who has ever hitched up a van to the back of the car or smelt sausages cooking in the warm air of a beach campsite. And with those campsites on expensive coastal real estate rapidly becoming an endangered species, it is a timely reminder of a way of life that is disappearing fast. Documenting the post-war rise of caravanning in the 40's through to the peak years of the 70's and 80's, and today, where caravan ownership is currently around 5000, Vantastic creates a vivid anecdotal portrait of the kiwi holiday industry of the times.;Core buyers are expected to be in the 30-60 age group - those who own and owned caravans and the adults who were children then - appealing to a similar nostalgic vein as that tapped into by the successful Gone Surfing.