page_title: New Age travellers
section_title: New Zealand housetruckers
hierarchical_section_title: New Age travellers / New Zealand housetruckers
caption_attribution_description: Image (photograph) taken at the 1981 en:Nambassa 5 day festival by Official Nambassa Photographer and uploaded by User: Mombas 04:20, 7 May 2007 (UTC) Nambassa dot com Terms of Use: 1/ All users of this image are required to attribute this work to "Nambassa Trust and Peter Terry" and the url: " http://www.nambassa.com " is to accompany all use. 2/ Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor. 3/ For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Statement by Nambassa Trust and Peter Terry
context_page_description: New Age travellers or crusties are people in the UK who often espouse New Age beliefs, and the hippie culture of the 1960s, and travel between music festivals and fairs, in order to live in a community with others who hold similar beliefs. A crusty's transport and home may consist of a van, lorry, bus, car, or caravan converted into a mobile home. A crusty may also make use of an improvised bender tent, tipi, or yurt. "New Age" travellers largely originated in 1980s and early 1990s Britain, when they were described as crusties because of the association with "encrusted dirt, dirt as a deliberate embrace of grotesquerie, a statement of resistance against society, proof of nomadic hardship."
context_section_description: In New Zealand, individuals, families or groups who convert old trucks and school buses into mobile homes and live in them, preferring an unattached and transient lifestyle to using more conventional housing are termed "housetruckers". These mobile home vehicles began appearing during the mid-1970s and even though there are fewer as of 2012 they continue to exist. An early manifestation of this culture came with the Blerta (1970–1973) traveling circus of music, light theatre and art. This involved a well-known New Zealand actor, Bruno Lawrence, and 30 or 40 hangers-on who traveled around the country in an old Bedford bus, sang, wrote and did hippie art. Most of the riders were radicals, hippies, groovers and free thinkers. They attracted a following and had a hit single with "Dance around the world" which was nominated for the Loxene Golden Disc in 1971, a local musical award at the time. After 1973 the Blerta project ran out of steam, and Lawrence turned his hand back to acting in such movies as Smash Palace in 1981.
caption: Housetrucks at the Nambassa 5-day festival, 1981
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