AUSTRALIA'S WICKED CAMPERS

SYDNEY—For Lukas Eichler and three young friends, a vacation Down Under was a chance to re-create the road trip of myth and memory. Out went responsibilities, rule books and, for the time being, the seriousness of growing up.

What these four fresh-faced boys from Germany didn't anticipate, though, is what happens when you set off down the highway in a battered rental van with a gold-toothed skeleton painted on the driver's side proclaiming: "Fresh 'till Death"—and a buxom brunette on the other.

Vans rented from Wicked Campers seem to come equipped with suspicion and backlash. (click below to read more)

Along with regular motoring nuisances like flat tires, potholes and kangaroos, bands of young visitors to Australia now face frequent run-ins with police eager to keep them on the straight and narrow. Lately, they have also had to contend with guerrilla tactics from Australians who sneak up on Wicked vans while their occupants sleep and whitewash offending images.

"When police see the van they maybe think we're doing some illegal stuff, or some hippie stuff," said Mr. Eichler, a 20-year-old who just finished high school in Frankfurt, as he returned his van to the rental place in Sydney after an eventful week touring the country's east coast.

On the wall of the Wicked Campers depot—where Mr. Eichler and other travelers come to exchange Wicked vehicles—a poster of a dreadlocked skeleton wearing a bandanna and a peace sign around his neck declares: "Where Have All the Hippies Gone?"

With their garish painted vans and shock graffiti slogans, Wicked Campers, as a business, has carved out a global niche causing a sensation on roads from the U.S. to Africa and Europe in the 10 years since the company was launched by Australian mechanic John Webb. More recently these rides have even been pimped out with dance floors on the roof, a further provocation to conservative beachside residents.

Wicked campers

The vans have achieved cult status here among backpackers and budget travelers with a taste for Outback adventure. Two out of every three vans, which start at about 35 Australian dollars a day (US$33), are rented to German and French travelers.

But their sense of carefree adventure isn't shared by some people old enough to remember the movie "Easy Rider" and Jack Kerouac's novel "On the Road." Ground zero for this cultural spat is the former hippy hamlet of Noosa on Queensland's Sunshine Coast: where stores selling opals and wind chimes are now outnumbered by five-star hotels and bars. It is here that town wardens have recently taken to painting over offensive vans while their occupants sleep or surf.

Sunshine Coast Mayor Mark Jamieson is leading calls for the vans to be barred from mobile home parks, beaches and surf breaks that would usually be the first port of call for Wicked's youthful customers, because of the offense they cause the unwary.

"Swear words across the side of a vehicle is not a good look," said Mr. Jamieson. "Regrettably, in society now we've let standards slip."

The state government in Queensland is looking into whether advertising laws should be tightened to clamp down on the Wicked vans. A decision is expected soon on whether to classify the vans as a form of outdoor advertising. That would subject them to the same scrutiny as commercial billboards. If passed, new laws could give police even more power to crack down on van designs considered obscene.

Paradoxically, Australians aren't typically known for prudishness. The country has spawned a number of lingerie supermodels, including Miranda Kerr and Elle Macpherson. To many Australians the national summer sporting pastime, cricket, wouldn't be the same without a naked spectator streaking across the pitch.

What's more, despite the psychedelic spray jobs and gold-rimmed hubcaps, the youngsters driving these Wicked campers—far from eschewing social norms—are actually steeped in them.

Scrawled in black marker across the dashboard of a van young Britons Jess Berry and Rich Grant drove nearly 600 miles from the northeastern city of Brisbane to Sydney in April are the so-called Wicked Commandments. Rule Number One: Acknowledge other Wicked vans; 2: Always use slow driving turnouts; 3: No road rage; 4: Take care of this van and she'll take care of you. Below the van's window is another note inviting campers to add their mark to a tally of koalas spotted and hitchhikers offered a lift.

"You see other Wicked vans, you give each other a wave, it's quite friendly," said Mr. Grant, 26, from Exeter, who is working as an engineer in the oil and gas industry on Australia's west coast. Traditional campervans "are a bit too pretentious for me" said Ms. Berry, also 26 and a naval architect from Salisbury, in England. "We'd heard quite a lot of good things about Wicked. Their cool designs. So we thought, why not."

The van's exterior paint jobs—which range from fresh interpretations of popular cartoons and comic strips such as Scooby-Doo and Garfield to rather more X-rated designs—are largely the work of a team of graffiti artists employed by the Wicked company. "If people were meant to pop out of bed, we'd all sleep in toasters," a reclining Garfield states on the side of one van parked up in the Sydney depot. Another seeks to re-create the "Mystery Machine" from the Scooby-Doo series.

The interiors, though, are a carte blanche for the creativity of their occupants: "Being a Wicked camper doesn't mean you have to smell. A shower a day IS possible. Almost," muses one former Wicked Camper who signs off only as Pouick. "An adventure is not possible without the possibility of death," another anonymous correspondent penned in an ode to the reckless abandon of youth.

Despite the growing controversy Down Under, the founder of Wicked vans remains unapologetic for even the most lurid of designs—despite the fact even his own wife thinks he's wicked.

"All publicity is good publicity unless it's an obituary," said Mr. Webb. "I think people's emotions run high sometimes."