How a 'dodgy' campervan unlocked the unexpected magic of Turkey for our family

The streets and theatres of ancient Ephesus have heard some fine oratory in their time. Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Paul and John the Apostles.

But not today. Not on this hot summer morning.

"Daaad, this is so f---ing boring," a teenage boy whines loudly. "It makes me want to die!"

Fortunately, I am not his dad. He belongs to a family whose cruise ship is berthed nearby, where he could have been eating a burger by the pool instead of being dragged to this lame place.

My teens, I'm glad to say, do not commit such heresy. They at least feign interest when the BYO audio guide Dad has arranged explains how the Nike swoosh logo was pinched from these very ruins.

And where Ephesus Kid has a luxury ship waiting at the end of his ordeal, our means of escape is being repaired at a nearby mechanic (more on that later).

But that's OK. You see, we are a campervan family.

That means long days of driving, toilet stops at servos, and strictly rationed internet. It means tolerating the other humans who share our small spaces day after day.

And it means even if you do think something is so f---ing boring, you keep that thought to yourself - lest you be reminded who's paying for you to be here.

Our journey begins at a campervan depot on Istanbul's western fringe. There, a very sweaty rental agent has realised our battery is flat. So instead of a smooth handover, we hunt for shade while he mops away his stress with a roll of paper towel as his mate in a hatchback jump-starts the van.

Not a great start, but we are campervan veterans by now: this is our sixth trip, with well over 25,000 European kilometres in the rear view. We keep coming back because a campervan trip is more than a holiday. It is freedom and it is adventure - spiced with the occasional mishap.

We're reminded of its rewards on our very first night. Near Gallipoli, we pull into the Boomerang, a ramshackle Aussie-themed bar that doubles as a free campsite for those happy to buy a drink or two. When we arrive unannounced, we find Mesut, the owner, alone outside his empty venue, scrolling his phone as cargo ships pass by along the Dardanelles.

At the sight of customers, he leaps into action.

"Help yourself. It's your home," he says, waving us toward the beer fridge. Don't mind if we do, Mesut.

Mesut has been here for 30-odd years. Once, the Boomerang was heaving with young Aussies and Kiwis drinking themselves silly on overland tours from Istanbul to Cairo. He pulls out thick books filled with messages from guests, scrawled during legendary nights.

The old guest books filled quickly, Mesut says. The current one has been running since 2011. The war in Syria destroyed that overland route and now he sees only dribs and drabs of Gallipoli tourists like us come by.

So he sits, with a faint air of Miss Havisham, sipping Raki and remembering the good times.

Despite his weighty nostalgia, he is funny and generous. He has only left Turkey once, but speaks passably half the languages of Europe - and he is especially proud of his "Australian". When he forgets a word, he consults his "dictionary": his glass of Raki. A sip later and out pops some improbable lost word like "flykick".

We like him immediately, and in his boardies and thongs he'll be the closest thing to an Aussie we'll see in weeks. Late that night, as we settle into the van to end the first of our 24 days, my wife and I talk about how lucky we are to have started our trip with such an encounter.

For most of the family the allure of Turkey is beaches, food and the promise of a sky full of hot air balloons. For me, it's more about history. This land has always been a crossroads - armies sweeping through it over thousands of years, empires rising and falling. No matter when or where you lived, there was always the sense that someone might come along and take it.

To keep everyone happy - the beach seekers and the history buff - we have plotted an anticlockwise loop from Istanbul, hugging the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts where we can. A rhythm quickly settles: a breakfast spread at the van, an ancient site in the morning, driving through the heat of the day and a beach in the afternoon.

Campervan travel isn't nearly as popular here as in western Europe. Campsites are fewer and more rustic, and it turns out suitable vans are much harder to find. It took weeks of research to secure something close to what our family of four needed, and even then what we have is cramped. The kids - as tall as Mum and Dad now - share a double bed, a pool noodle down the middle serving as a demarcation line. They cope well enough but it's pretty clear this will be the last time we can make it work.

The van has seen better days, the odometer displaying more than 200,000 character-building kilometres. The power steering shrieks alarmingly at low speed, announcing our arrival in supermarket carparks.

So perhaps we shouldn't be surprised when Turkish warning messages begin flashing as we cruise towards Selcuk, the gateway to Ephesus.

We pull into a service station - full service, thankfully. The attendant, Tarik, quickly spots a nasty leak somewhere deep in the engine bay. With the help of a translation app, he tells us the bad news and contacts the rental agency in Istanbul for us.

"Let's get a master repairer, brother," comes the reply.

So Tarik sends us 10 minutes up the road to an industrial estate in town, where his friend, an auto electrician, acts like a triage nurse. He diagnoses the problem then hops on a moped and signals for us to follow him to another "brother" in trade.

And so on it goes. Each person dropping what they are doing to help. We smile, nod, and clap our thanks as we are passed along this chain of trust until we find ourselves in the greasy hands of the best mechanic in town (according to his customers, who gather around curiously).

A part has to be ordered from Izmir overnight. We spend the next morning wandering Ephesus and by the afternoon the van is fixed, payment sorted, and we are back on the road with no delay to our plans.

In a country we have barely begun exploring, we are quickly learning how things work: not through efficient, soulless systems, but through people and trust.

When we reach our next stop I send the mechanic another thank-you for our rescue. He replies with the sweetest comments about our family and an invitation to his home if ever we return. We feel quite sure he means it.

Our Raki-drinking friend Mesut isn't the only person waiting and hoping for better times.

Down on the southern coast, in the lush valley of Dalyan, Arif is waiting for tables to fill at his riverside restaurant, where turtles and giant geese hang about in the hope of scraps from a breakfast array too big to even fit on our table.

We had met Arif by chance at a bar the night before. When he heard we were from Canberra, he exclaimed, "Me too!" Yes, he'd once lived and worked just a few blocks from us. This flukey connection delighted him even more than it did us, and he insisted we come for breakfast.

As we sit surrounded by empty tables, he explains how the US-Iran conflict has worsened a tourism industry already weak because of post-pandemic inflation.Turkey has stopped being a "cheap" holiday and travellers have looked elsewhere.

But still Arif wants to give us our massive meal for free. We don't let him do that, and as we leave he hugs us as if we're lifelong friends. He sends us messages throughout the rest of our trip, just checking in to see how we are going.

This is far from the only time we feel this kind of warmth. As a family of Aussies travelling this way, particularly conspicuous amid the tourism slump, we are very much a novelty.

"Where are you from? Oh Australia, wow, welcome!" was an everyday exchange.

One restaurant owner comes to our table and, emotion in his voice, recites Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's message to the mothers of Anzacs: "Wipe away your tears...Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."

After an abundance of boat trips and swims we leave the southern coast. The van, like us, finally seems to have settled into the journey. We pass north over mountains and onto the vast plains and the Silk Road, where fortified "caravanserai" protected the goods-laden camel trains of the past and now offer us tea in the shade.

In Cappadocia we watch a long sunset on horseback and dawn skies filled with balloons, some passing thrillingly close to the roof of our van.

We push north. Packing more driving hours in each day means we walk barefoot on a vast salt lake one day and hike through thick pine forests the next.

As Istanbul beckons and we near 3500 kilometres of our journey, we camp near busy Black Sea beaches, where domestic summer tourism is at its peak.

Our white skin and freckles stand out as we go in for a dip. Our towels are set up next to a group who are cooking a whole lamb on coals while smoking a hookah. We love the sense that we are probably the only non-Turks on this whole stretch of sand enjoying the sun as it slowly drops below the horizon.

It's for moments like this that we choose this way of travel. Sure, it has its share of angst and privations. But these are few and ultimately they are insignificant.

Campervan travel brings us to places we'd never otherwise see, and into the arms - often literally - of the kindest people you will meet.

Compared to this, other ways of travel seem, well, to quote Ephesus Kid...

The writer travelled at his own expense