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By Emrys Quin

Residents and frequenters of both St. Kilda and Bondi will be familiar with the vision of eccentricity that is Adrian’s Space Van. Originally from Melbourne, Adrian is an itinerant man who has owned his bright silver and yellow mobile-home, sporting a chrome surfboard and satellites, for eleven years. During that time, he has made many a regular trip between Sydney and Melbourne.

The Space Van on one of its many travels through rural NSW

Although he has inevitably had to deal with vandalism, heckling and attempted sabotage as a result of his individualism, he has also brought a great deal of happiness to passers-by, or anyone who cares to ask for a story/simply relax and enjoy an afternoon with him. I met Adrian in late January when I saw the van parked rather anomalously in the Pavilion carpark.

I approached and asked the lean, shades-wearing, tanned 50-something man, smiling broadly and watching a game of Frisbee-soccer (which I hadn’t heard of before meeting Adrian and his mates) about the van’s history. He told me the space-van’s eccentricity had once saved a man’s life.
“I was parked in Brunswick street during a local market,” he told me in his easy, laconic way, “when this guy came up to me and just said ‘thank you so much’”.
“Why’d he thank you?” I asked, and Adrian told me that the man had been suicidal five months prior – he was in debt, in a bad relationship and keeping to bad habits. This stranger had considered ‘ending it all’ –as he put it in no ambiguous term – one night when walking down the selfsame street he was recounting this all to Adrian, when he turned into a sidestreet and saw Adrian’s van parked by a streetlight.

Back then Adrian’s van had two enormous Alien headrests behind the driver and passenger seats. The image of a bright silver, radar/satellite/surfboard adorned spaceship seemingly been driven by two dismembered Alien heads was one of such joy to the man he stood there for an hour, completely overcome.

“He turned around after that, walked away, and tells me he got his life in order after that,” Adrian said to me with a content sort of finality.

The Space Van at the Pavilion

The Space Van is reportedly on Bondi Beach during the day 100 days a year, so if you’re that far east this summer and see Adrian in his space-van why not approach, say hi and ask for a story yourself?