G'day all,
I am pretty new to the camper trailer world, however I have been lurking here for a couple of months gathering valuable information. Let me just say that this is a great forum, and thanks for all the input from those in the know!
My wife and I have been reasonably keen campers (Me more than her....) and recently did our annual 8-night Christmas/New Year camping trip with friends in the Vic High Country. She has never been keen however on the time it takes to pack the tent and all the camping gear into the back of the Jeep like Tetris and then all the time spent setting up, packing up, storing the gear etc. Also, being a keen cook, she has always been jealous of those camping near us with functional undercover kitchens and annexes where you can sit and enjoy some decent camping grub. We don’t have any kids and don’t plan to for the foreseeable future, however we were constantly finding that we had no room for all our camping gear in the Jeep and recently the 6x4 trailer has become almost a necessity, which is OK with me as I use it as an excuse to take my KTM 525 dirt bike with me! We thought about running a roof pod for extra storage, but we also like to take the mountain bikes with us on the roof racks, so it was one or the other.
To cut a long story short, the annual Christmas/New Year 8-day long camping trip this year was a little too much for the wife this time and whilst we came back satisfied, we were pretty exhausted and jealous of our friends who packed up in half the time as they were using caravans. We didn’t really want a caravan as they are large, heavy and need room to store, can’t really be taken off-road (properly) and we have always seen it as cheating, or “Glamping”. Then at a BBQ at my neighbour’s house (“Jimquinn” on this forum) he showed me the Aussie Jay’s camper trailer website as he and his wife had just visited the workshop that day and were about to put down a deposit on a “Big Red”.
Well, that was it! The wife and I were keen as beans to get one and after looking online started getting sucked in by the cheap Chinese ones that seemed to have everything for half the price. Well, all it took was one trip to Melbourne where we looked at various cheap Chinese trailers, some well regarded second-hand ones (Tru Blu, Tambo etc.) and finally Aussie Jay’s and any thought of getting a “bargain” with the Chinese ones was gone. I was amazed at the quality of workmanship that was going into the Aussie Jay’s trailers and when Jason and Rebekah spent over an hour with us running through all the options, the pros and cons and finer details of how they were built we were sold!
We were lucky to have been able to get a quote on a Big Red before the sale price finished in late January and we are putting a deposit down on one this weekend! Now the only decision left to make is whether we get the new quick-setup 9ft tent with gas strut assist and tropical roof or the new 12ft tent or of course the tried and tested Austrack tent, but that’s for another thread..... Our neighbours picked theirs up on Tuesday and we got to check it out last night and it looks the goods! Getting excited now.....
Cheers,
Mil
