When Lesley Wheeler, 72, noticed rental prices on the rise in her outer Melbourne suburb of Frankston six years ago, she had a stark realisation that the only way she was going to survive retirement was to own her own property.
“Four months prior to turning 65, I’d been told by some job service: ‘Don’t even bother looking for another job because at your age you won’t get one and you’re a woman’,” she said.
“I kind of realised that I was going to be stuck. I had no superannuation left, as I had to use that previously, and no other resources other than a pension.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to have to do something about this’ and the tiny house movement interested me.”
Refrigerated trailer becomes one-bedroom home
The tertiary-educated, well-travelled university lecturer, who had worked for the federal government in senior roles, set about researching tiny homes, throwing every cent she had from a modest inheritance at designing a customised dwelling.
“I’ve had to put a lot of thought into how I live. It’s purpose built for me,” Lesley said.
Lesley worked out it would be more economical for her to convert an insulated truck trailer on wheels into a tiny house, rather than convert a shipping container or build a new dwelling from scratch.
So she purchased a 13-metre decommissioned, refrigerated trailer and set to work.
Lesley spent the next eight months converting the trailer into a compact one-bedroom house, complete with kitchen, dining table, lounge, office space and bathroom.
The next step was to find a location to park up.
After a soggy stint living in the trailer on a friend’s flood-prone property, she secured a small plot of land to lease at an over-55s caravan park in West Gippsland in regional Victoria.
Lesley added double-glazed windows, homely trinkets, shelving for her books and DVDs, as well as a washer and dryer and traditional, wooden front door.
For the exterior, she constructed a verandah around the trailer, lined with pot plants, a couch and cat bed, with stairs to her very own private garden.
“I did have to downsize a fair bit, but what I downsized to is everything that means something to me,” Lesley said.
“I’m surrounded by things from all my international travel, my study, funny little gifts that people have given me, gifts from my kids.”
Living alone, together
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the number of older women experiencing homelessness in Australia has grown by 40 per cent between 2011 and 2021 to more than 7,000.
In many cases, a marriage breakdown, death of a partner, illness or loss of a job, together with a lack of savings, plunges older women into their first experience of homelessness.
There are 61 residents at the caravan park where Lesley lives. Some own their own dwellings and lease their tiny plot of land. Others lease a cabin and land, as if they were renting a flat.
They are mostly single women, over the age of 55.
Six Somalian abattoir workers who live in two of the cabins also call the park home and the residents have a buddy system where they check in on each other.
“We have a pretty good little community here that cares for each other, which is pretty good as you get older,” Lesley said.
‘Not all of us have led the lucky life’
One of Lesley’s neighbours is Carol, 72, who lives in a wooden cabin, on the boundary of the park.
Twice-widowed, Carol realised, at age 55, that she needed her own space.
She had been living with her daughter and four grandchildren, and slept on a mattress on the floor next to the new baby for 10 months.
“I tried looking at a few flats and houses. I was working two days a week … and came to the conclusion that maybe a caravan park might be the place to go.”
Like many of the park’s residents, Carol is living on an extremely tight budget and admits her first experience of living at a caravan park was not great.
She was often fearful of drug and alcohol-affected residents and after 15 years at that caravan park, she had to relocate when it was eventually closed down.
“Not all of us have led that lucky life where we’ve met the right person, got established families, nice comfortable homes and money in the bank,” Carol said.
And she said, for that, she often felt judged.
“When you live in a caravan park, people just lump you in with everybody else.
“They don’t think that there are everyday people living there. I don’t take drugs, I don’t smoke, don’t drink.”
Peaceful and private
Since securing an available rental cabin with an ensuite at the caravan park in eastern Victoria, Carol has enjoyed the peace and quiet of a relatively drama-free life.
With rental cabins ranging from $280-$300 per week, inclusive of water, electricity and heating bills, she has been able to live debt-free, with her phone bill and car insurance her main expenses.
Carol takes great joy in the occasional woodwork, tending to the park’s community garden and the weekly happy hour and meal in the community shed.
“I’m happy I don’t have any worries,” she said.
“Being part of the community garden has been a blessing because it’s given me something to do and I’m able to share around the park what is produced.”
‘My own space’
Carol’s neighbour Jane, 57, is a single mother who went to university as a mature-aged student to become a teacher.
But her world fell apart when she entered a violent relationship after her children had left home.
The residential youth worker and foster mum went from living in a $1 million house in 2018 to bed-hopping between her children’s houses after a back injury.
“It’s depressing having ill health, it wasn’t just easy to get up and go out and do something,” Jane said.
“So I could be in my bedroom for 24 hours a day.”
While living at her daughter’s house, she felt constrained.
“I couldn’t sew, I couldn’t do a garden, I couldn’t do anything.
“None of my friends would come over because they didn’t feel like they could relax and be comfortable.”
It was securing a home at the over-55s park in west Gippsland that turned her life around.
“After applying, applying and applying I managed to get a cabin here, and it’s my own space, it’s my safe space,” she said.
“I can cook what I want, when I want, I’ve got my own bathroom, I’ve got my own space.
“I can even work on sewing a quilt on the kitchen table, leave it overnight, and come back to it the next day without having to pack it away.
“Some people might think of me as trailer trash or whatever — but I’m free.”
After van life
Gayle Wilson, 70, lives a few doors down from Lesley.
After the death of her daughter, she downsized her life and escaped to the bush, free-camping around Alexandra and Eildon in Victoria.
To keep warm, she would sleep with her dogs.
“I got rid of all my furniture, all my crystal cabinet stuff that I’d carried around with me for the last 30 to 40 years, it all went to the tip or the op shop,” Gayle said.
Ironically, having spent her career finding temporary boarding accommodation for children in state care, she joined the growing brigade of Australians living permanently on the road.
“It’s a horrible thing to have to deal with being homeless. Women particularly carry this because they are homemakers. It’s a sense of failure,” she said.
“As women, we can make a home around a fire, in a van, in a caravan park, but we need to have something to ground us.”
After five months of van life, suffering from osteoarthritis and requiring knee surgery, Gayle found it difficult to get herself in and out of the van.
Luckily, a friend found an available cabin for her at the caravan park.
She reflects on how living in the park has helped her reclaim her sense of humour, how she was able to laugh again, and how taking an interest in the comings and goings of “the village” became important.
“It helps me keep living each day as it comes, it helps me look forward to the next day.”
Pros and cons of park life
As people baulk at the upfront cost of residential aged care, more and more older Australians are considering alternative ways to make their money stretch further in retirement.
Manufactured Home Owners Association of Victoria president Judith Duff said while caravan park living was an affordable option, a lack of regulation could leave tenants vulnerable to unexpected rental increases.
She said of the 100 or so residential caravan parks on the association’s radar, only 10 per cent were registered with local councils.
“There’s no accreditation, there’s no registration, owner-operators have been able to play their own game for the last 15 to 20 years,” she said.
Judith said cabin renters could also be too afraid to speak up about maintenance issues such as mouldy walls or non-functional toilets and showers, in fear of being priced or bullied out, with some park owners taking an “if you don’t like it, leave” attitude.
‘It’s safe and it’s mine’
At the east end of the park, a number of recycled cabins inherited from a recently closed caravan park are perched on freshly graded plots awaiting utility connections, and a new intake of residents.
Lesley Wheeler predicts that tiny home living in residential caravan parks like this one, for the over 55s, will be the way of the future.
With a spectacular view of green pastures towards the mountains, Lesley takes comfort and great relief in what she has managed to achieve in setting up her home.
“I’ve got a really comfortable little house that I own,” she said.
“I can just hear the birds and it’s still and it’s calm and it’s safe and it’s mine.”
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