Campervan Tug of War (Wicked Campers, Broome Australia)

On my last trip to Broome in August, I filmed Round II of the Wicked Campers North-West Backpacker Games; a fortnightly fun competition held between Broome's Last Resort and The Kimberley Klub.

During this round, both teams competed in a Wicked Tug o' War competiton- and lugged two of our 4WD's down the gorgeous Gantheaume Point Broome

Check out the Wicked footage!

Wicked Campers - The Truth

Wicked Campers has approximately 12,000 rentals every year! I caught up with some happy customers out and about in Cairns and captured their feedback, its in this video "Wicked Campers- The Truth".

Wicked Driving tips Australia

We're always advising our customers to stay safe on our roads and this 4min video outlines the big safety tips we provide our Wickedees. 4WD tips are also included - there can be quite difficult terrain in the outback so you need to be careful!

New Wicked Campers digs in Brisvegas!

Chaotic can only describe the last week or so! We had over 70 van pickups for Splendour in the Grass, with customers flying in from Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra and even Perth to pickup their Wicked wheels. I've taken some interview footage with our customers.

In the same week we also moved premises. Our Brisbane depot, formerly in Fortitude Valley has now relocated to 100 Longlands Street, Woolloongabba. All our offices have located to the new premises - we used to have our Sales, Evangelism, Workshops, Panel-beaters, Accounts in separate offices around East Brisbane, but finally - we are all together!

The new digs resemble a Wild West town and after a downpour of rain on the weekend I was advised to wear gumboots into the office. The "new" Evangelism office is fitted out with tin-walls; corrugated roofs, old concrete flooring from the 70s yet its rustic, and cosy and truly Wicked-styled!

Over time this place will be hotted up but here's how it looks at the moment...not your ordinary office environment!!!

Wicked Campers sets a Guinness World Record

This year is going all too quickly! I can't believe my last post was back in May. A LOT has happened with Wicked Evangelism in the last few weeks, I'll try wrap up all the magic in a future post - but I wanted to spruik about the Wicked Campers World Wecord attempt first :)

On Sunday June 27, the Tricky van was parked outside The Wickham Hotel in Fortitude Valley (Brisbane) and the people flocked to try for a new Guinness World Record. Wicked Evangelist Mary registered the attempt with Guinness World Records and noted the criteria for the attempt:

- All participants must be in the vehicle within 10mins of starting

- All participants must be over 5 foot tall

- All participants must be over the age of 16.

A total of 36 people squished into the campervan - unbelievable!

Here they are out in the open.

The only casuality from the day was a broken windscreen...whoops.

Here's a 30 second video from the event - fun!

The Body Art Carnivale!

The Australian Body Art Carnivale was held last week in Eumundi, Queensland. Eumundi is a gorgeous little town on the Sunshine Coast, famous for its markets which are held on Wednesday's and Saturday's each week.

The Carnivale is a celebration of colour, with many different art exhibitions and competitions held over the weekend. Wicked Campers jumped on board the event this year and sponsored the Vehicle "Show and Shine" competition and the Wicked "Vehicle Art" comp. We enlisted 5 local artists to paint our Wicked vans.

Now because we needed 5 vans up there, we needed 5 drivers. So we made it a girls weekend and drove up the coast on Friday afternoon; dumped the vehicles and hit the Masked Gallery Walk, a "pub crawl"of all the Art Galleries spread through the town. It was such a great event, we met dozens of awesome people, drank bubblies and ate delicious food (oh, the churros)!

The entire weekend was fabulous - a great mix of entertainment, music, food, friendships and karaoke. Congratulations to David Houghton who won the Vehicle Art competition with his fabulous "Avatar'' themed Wicked Camper.

Some pics from the wknd are below

Texts from last night

It's been a while since my last blog post and I can blame that on having way too good a time over Easter! All our Wicked depots were under the pump over the Easter break - many of our customer's who picked up vans were heading to a variety of festivals over the break and we hope you all had an amazing experience!

A feature of our Wicked Campers Facebook page is the 'Wicked one-liner of the day'. It has a pretty regular following, with fans writing in and showing their appreciation/loathing for various slogans we host on the site. I usually gather quotes from vans I see parked around town; or from quotes provided by Mrs Wicked, or mates at the office. Yesterday I couldn't find a suitable quote so I asked around the office and Ross showed us a website called 'Texts from Last Night'. This site is a gold-mine of quotes - all pretty much related to sex, drugs and alcohol - and all texts which have actually been sent. Some would be perfect on our vans; other's not so much.... here are some of my favourites:

I may have a concussion but the symptoms are the same as a hangover so I can't tell. Best 21st ever.

Important life lesson - flammable and inflammable mean the same thing

I saw a girl walking around campus with bandages on both her knees. I need to get her number.

Dude has a bag of wine attached to his belt. These guys don't f*ck around.

A horse told me not to drive home last night. I think there was a cop on top of it.

As an update to my previous post It's been two weeks since we started the Virginity competition, and our winning entries have been published online, you can view them here.

The Virginity Emails

Sometimes I can't believe I get paid to do the stuff that I do.

Like this week.

We're urging our customers to 'leave their message' on the inside of our Wicked Campers, to create a bit of a culture and attach some history/wisdom/character to each van.

One method we're using to encourage this is asking customer's to write in the vans 'how they lost their virginity'. We've incorporated this idea with an online competition, asking the public for their virginity stories. The best (most ingenious; yet true) stories will win a free Wicked 7 day roadtrip from Cairns to Sydney.

Well! I've never been so excited to check my email before...

The stories I've received so far are so intriguing! I do have my 'favourite' stories, but to keep it fair the Evangelism Panel will read all the entries at the end of each fortnight to select the roadtrip winner.

Here's a snippet of a story I received yesterday.

When i was 16, I broke up with my boyfriend of a year. After id broken his heart and he was sitting on the edge of his bed crying (yes, well he was only 16) I asked him if I could lose my vplates to him. Even though he was waiting for marriage (religious reasons) but I really wanted to have sex for the first time with him, not some random idiot.

So he gave up his virginity to me that day, only to have his mother walk into his room not expecting her religious son to be doing me from behind on the bed. Not such a good moment. After that afternoon I was never allowed to go back into that house. And she never believed him that it was the first time hed had sex either. Oops.

So i broke the poor guys heart, stole his precious virginity and got him grounded for a long long time. all in the space of about 4 hours...

How did you lose your virginity? Tell us here!

The Great Noosa Campout

Mary and I spent the morning in Noosa, at the media launch for 'The Great Noosa Campout', a 3 day event held over the easter holidays.

As I'm a bit struck for time I'll post some photos of the Noosa Campout van tomorrow, but I wanted to upload this footage from the launch. The major of Noosa, Bob Abbot spoke about the festival and gave Wicked Campers some lovely feedback! It's all here in this video.

Snaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaake!

You know what it's like on a Monday morning...you usually stagger into work, mourning the weekend and can't function until you have a shot of caffeine. This Monday morning started out like the norm and then at 9.10am, Ross our graphic designer yelped out from the bathroom. "F*ck!""... (pause)... "SNAKE!".

A massive green tree snake was patiently waiting for Ross outside the bathroom. Ross slowly shimmied his way past the imposing creature, and fortunately the snake slithered down the stairs. This photo attempts to capture the snake as it made its getaway; unfortunately he was a very camera shy snake.

It took awhile to get over the surprise, and we were trying to stop laughing in order to figure out strategies to keep the snake out, when we spotted something else slithering on the office floor. A massive lizard! The snake had obviously been trying to catch his breakfast from our office floor space.

A hilarious morning and a great way to start the working week! Hopefully there are no more similar surprises in stall later this week, though I reckon this would be the perfect time to slip a fake spider on someone's unsuspecting desk.

Father Ted in Australia!

Wicked are collaborating with the Tedfest festival down in Parkes, NSW. This is a completely unique festival and looks amazing if you're a fan of the cult TV show "Father Ted".

For those who don't know what Father Ted is, Wikipedia can help:

Father Ted was a situation comedy television program produced by the British television company Hat Trick Productions which first ran from 1995 to 1998 on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom. It starred Dermot Morganin the title role as the Irish Catholic priest Father Ted Crilly, and was set on the remote fictional Craggy Islandparish off the west coast of Ireland.The show follows the lives of Ted and his fellow priests, Father Dougal McGuire (Ardal O'Hanlon) and Father Jack Hackett (Frank Kelly), who are exiled on the island, living together in the Parochial house with the fourth main character, housekeeper Mrs. Doyle (Pauline McLynn).

The Tedfest van will feature as part of the Paddy's day festival in Sydney this weekend, so grab a pint o' guinness and wave your shamrock flags as it swings by!

Tedfest are putting on a fabulous deal for all Wicked punters:

- 3 Tedfest tickets for the price of 2 (saving of $250!)

If you're booking a Wicked Camper for the Tedfest festival you also get a wicked 5% discount (direct bookings only)! Ah, 'tis the luck of the Irish.

Our Wicked grafitti guy did an impressive job painting up the van, check it out: