The Long Road Home
The Long Road Home
Roy Spinder, a 1958 Volkswagen Kombi and the freedom to keep moving.
I first met Roy Spinder at Warwick Drags. Among all the Volkswagens at the event, his old Palm Green and Sand Green split-window Kombi caught my attention. It was the kind of bus I love. Worn, imperfect and showing every bit of its 68 years.
What I didn't know at the time was that the bloke driving it had only recently brought it back to life after more than 30 years off the road.
Roy is 32, originally from the Netherlands, and has spent much of his adult life travelling the world in old Volkswagens. Not restored show cars or expensive camper conversions, but vehicles he's built and maintained himself, often with little more than the tools and parts he can carry.
His 1964 Baja Beetle has taken him across Europe, the United States and Canada. His latest adventure brought him to Australia, where he purchased a rather tired 1958 Volkswagen Kombi in Dubbo.
And when I say tired, I mean it.
The bus had been sitting for over three decades. Most people would have looked at it as a long-term restoration project, something to tackle over a few years, perhaps even longer.
Roy gave himself four weeks.
In that time, he managed to get the old bus back on the road, with his first proper test drive being the roughly 3,500-kilometre journey from Sydney to Perth.
That's a fairly ambitious shakedown run for a Volkswagen that hadn't turned a wheel in 30 years.
As someone who's spent a good part of my life tinkering with old Volkswagens, I found that pretty remarkable. Not just the mechanical ability involved, but the confidence to set off across a country as vast as Australia in a vehicle you've only just finished putting back together.
There's something incredibly liberating about that level of self-reliance. Knowing that whatever goes wrong, you'll probably find a way to fix it.
And Roy seems to have that attitude towards just about everything.
More than just an old Volkswagen
A couple of weeks after Warwick, Roy was making his way through Sydney, so we arranged to spend a day together filming for The Purist.
We headed out towards Richmond and the surrounding countryside, looking for quiet roads and somewhere we could sit down and talk.
We didn't quite catch the sunrise we'd hoped for, but we managed to get some beautiful footage of the Kombi winding through the backroads. Eventually, we found a spot in the bush to record our interview, battling the heat as we went.
Going into the shoot, I was mostly interested in Roy's adventures and his ability to build these old cars. I wanted to understand what motivates someone to travel the world alone, often thousands of kilometres from anyone they know, in vehicles most people wouldn't trust to get them to the shops.
But as our conversation unfolded, I realised there was a much more interesting story behind the Volkswagens.
Roy spoke openly about some of the personal challenges he'd faced, including an autoimmune illness that, at one point, left him unable to do even the most basic things.
For someone whose life revolves around independence, movement and the freedom to go wherever he chooses, I can only imagine how difficult that must have been.
Listening to him describe those experiences, and the determination it took to regain his independence, genuinely blew me away.
Suddenly, his ability to rebuild an old Kombi in four weeks seemed almost secondary.
What impressed me most wasn't what Roy could do with a set of spanners. It was his resilience, his perspective on life and his willingness to keep moving forward despite everything he'd been through.
There's a certain confidence that comes from knowing you can repair your own car. But there's an entirely different kind of confidence that comes from having faced serious challenges in life and finding your way through them.
I think Roy has both.
The freedom to figure it out
One of the things that stayed with me from our conversation was how little Roy seems to need to be happy.
He's travelled across continents, met countless people and experienced places most of us will only ever see in photographs. Yet his life remains remarkably simple.
An old Volkswagen, somewhere to sleep, enough money to keep moving and the freedom to decide where to go next.
There's something appealing about that, particularly in a world where we're constantly encouraged to want more, buy more and achieve more.
But I also appreciated that Roy wasn't pretending to have everything figured out.
Towards the end of our conversation, he admitted that at 32, he still doesn't really know what he wants to do with his life.
I found that refreshing.
Here was someone who'd travelled the world, overcome significant personal challenges and developed the skills to build and maintain his own vehicles, yet he was still asking himself the same questions many of us struggle with.
Perhaps that's what I took away from the experience more than anything.
You don't necessarily need to know where you're going to be heading in the right direction.
The Long Road Home
I've always believed that the cars we feature on The Purist are really just a way of telling stories about people.
Sometimes it's about nostalgia, the connection to a parent or a childhood memory. Other times it's about the people we meet and the friendships that form around these old machines.
Roy's story is a little different.
I went into this film expecting to make something about a young Dutch bloke travelling Australia in an old Volkswagen. I came away with a much greater appreciation for the person behind the wheel.
I was inspired by his skills, but even more by his outlook on life and everything he'd overcome to get where he is today.
I hope that comes across in the film.
Because sometimes the longest journeys teach us to appreciate what we've left behind.
Watch our latest film featuring Roy Spinder and his 1958 Volkswagen Kombi on The Purist YouTube channel.
You can also follow Roy's adventures and Volkswagen builds on his YouTube channel, Off Grid Baja 64.
