Hi all - this forum is a fabulous resource, and I've spent far too much time trawling it already - and suspect I'll be doing a lot more. Thank you to all the contributors, it is exceptionally useful.
I've been camping all my life, mostly very lightweight camping in support of outdoor adventures, principally rock climbing. Graduated to car camping when I got married, but still very lightweight, 3 man tent and few luxuries. Then came kids, and the lightweight became middleweight (as did I...) and the Subaru Forester eventually became hugely overloaded with big tents, camp kitchens, awnings and all the requirements of comfortable remote camping for 5-10 days.
So we looked at getting a bigger mid-size 4x4, but the reality is you need to step up to full-size 4x4 to get a lot more internal and roof space than the Forester - and that is stretching the budget too far at the moment. Proper camping trailer is also outside the budget, so decided to buy a decent heavy duty box trailer, which we can option up and customise over the years into a proper camping trailer. I think this will be a good idea for us to work out exactly what we need & want through trial and error, at reasonable expense. Then once we know exactly what we want, we can save towards our perfect CT.
So stage 1 in this process is a new 7x4 heavy duty high side box trailer from Holiday Trailers in Sydney - very good value at $1200 with jockey wheel, spare wheel, two jerry can holders and a fitted PVC tarp, 40mm axle and 5-spring slipper suspension - very basic, but probably well enough matched to our softroading ambitions and Subaru. We are pretty slick insetting up our 8-man (very comfortable for 2 adults, 2 kids) semi-geodesic dome tent and have a huge (6mx3.4m) tarp awning as our leisure and cooking centre. The trailer then allows us to chuck in giant cooler (good for 5 days), diving / climbing / whatever gear, kayaks on the roofracks, bicycles on a hang-off rack on the back door, and adventures are go.
All pretty basic, but we've had 10-day holidays very comfortably just out of the car (witha mid-point replenish stop), so think the additional space the trailer will just mean more space for luxuries (i.e. beer) initially. And bit by bit we can add more refinements to the setup, as we feel we want / need them.
Cool - nice to be here
