Jayco Albury Wodonga dealer principal Michael Houlihan has been in the business 13 years, but never in his time has he seen a year as crazy as the last two during the pandemic.
Mr Houlihan said a graph of sales looked like a tsunami.
"Like very high waves and then these little low trough," he said.
At the beginning of the pandemic, just before COVID-19 hit Australia and the nation saw the first of what was to be multiple lockdowns, Mr Houlihan said his store had huge sales.
"March 2020 was one of the biggest months we've ever had on record," he said.
Mr Houlihan said he sold about 30 caravans, but the very next month, he sold ten times less.
"In April we sold three, so that was the difference," he said.
Mr Houlihan said everythign was at a standstill, but from May the seesaw of sales tipped again, and business began picking up for the next three months.
"Everyone was saying 'hang on we're going to be stuck here for the next few years, we better get a caravan'," he said.
"By the end of June we were nearly out to the end of that year at that stage, but then the problem with it was getting them in, things were getting pushed back [due to supply chain issues]."
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Mr Houlihan estimated said he'd heard that in 2019 Australians spent $76 billion on overseas travel, but with international borders closed in 2020 and for most of 2021, they weren't going anywhere.
"Lots of people that we never saw came in," he said.
"Young families have just gone through the roof in sales.
"All those cheap holidays were out, so the next best thing was to buy a caravan and go see Australia."
Though Mr Houlihan said he wasn't worried about going broke, border closures provided a challenge.
"It made business difficult, very difficult," he said.
"Roughly 35 per cent of our business is Victoria and we've 65 per cent's NSW and we were cut off from most of then NSW ones from Wagga through Griffith and that area for a long time and cut off from most of our Victorian ones from Wodonga and Wangaratta."
Despite that, Mr Houlihan said sales had been fantastic.
"We're actually up 50 per cent this year on what we were last year, which was up 34 per cent on the year before," he said.
"And now we've nearly sold out to 2022, with 2023 models already scheduled for production.
"When things get tight people don't buy leisure products, but I just can't believe how people have come out of this thing."
Mr Houlihan said the business even had to advertise for more staff to keep up with the work.
"We've gone from around about 22 staff at this time last year to about 30 now," he said.
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Victoria Ellis
Victoria Ellis grew up on the Border and loves reporting for her home community. She is a University of Wollongong Journalism graduate. In 2018 Victoria was awarded the Bruce Gordon Scholarship for Journalism and completed a 10 week internship with WIN News Illawarra. In 2019 she was awarded The Border Mail's Cameron Thompson Scholarship, where she completed a three week internship, before taking up ongoing employment in 2021.
Victoria Ellis grew up on the Border and loves reporting for her home community. She is a University of Wollongong Journalism graduate. In 2018 Victoria was awarded the Bruce Gordon Scholarship for Journalism and completed a 10 week internship with WIN News Illawarra. In 2019 she was awarded The Border Mail's Cameron Thompson Scholarship, where she completed a three week internship, before taking up ongoing employment in 2021.
