Part 3 – The Camping Show….I mean Caravan Show
Before we continue the story
This past Saturday, Alison and I ventured out the the QLD Caravan and Camping show at Brisbane’s RNA show grounds. It’s our first camping show and we wanted to see what it was all about. Even though we have already chosen our camper, we still wanted to see what was on offer, to either confirm that we made the right choice or to make ourselves second guess it.
Before we get to the show
Let’s go back to where we left off in my last post. We had just visited Mars Campers on Brisbane’s Southside and we were convinced that a Forward Fold camper was what would suit our needs and wants, well we hoped anyway.
That afternoon I jumped online, fired up the Googles and started searching. We had a list of requirements that we wanted to tick off to make sure a FF would work for us.
Firstly, it needed to be easy to setup. Gone are the days of pitching tents for us. We don’t like it and it takes too long. Our current camper is pretty easy to setup. It opens to side, smack few pegs in the ground and we are done. We use a gazebo at the moment, which is very easy to setup as well. However, that’s just the tent, you still have all your tables, kitchen, fridge etc etc, all up, we can can done in about 30mins. So, are FF’s easy to setup? Yes, for the most part. If you don’t setup the awning, you can up in about 5mins. This worked well for us, if did a longer than normal road trip and we stopped somewhere over night, we wouldn’t bother setting up the awning, so this was a tick for us.
Secondly, it has to fit in our garage. This was a little harder to work out. Each camper on the market had a slightly different length. I knew my garage was 6m deep, however, I have shelves and a work bench that needed to go somewhere. I will post later on, a plan I drew up of my garage to make sure it all fits…spoiler alert…it does.
Thirdly, well actually, that was pretty much the main two things we wanted. This list would grow over the coming weeks, but that’s where we started.
For those of you from Brisbane, you probably have travelled to the Sunny Coast regularly. And most of us would have paid attention to the industrial estate at Caboolture, just off the highway. This appears to be the natural habit of camper and caravan companies. If you venture there on a Saturday morning, you will find lots of eager fellow campers looking to find their next house on wheels.
After a week of trolling the interwebs, we decided to head to this jungle of campers and see them in their natural habitat and hopefully find what we were looking for.
During my research I had found that a few manufacturers made smaller FF’s that are lighter and more compact and easier on the budget. Seeing as it was just the two of us (and the pup) these looked like they might be the go. Here is where we ran into some trouble though. We couldn’t get a firm answer from some of the manufacturers about the size of the bed (only one had the actual size published online). We had to have a queen sized bed, I mean, this is not called Big Guy Camping for nothing. There also seemed to be another downside to these smaller FF’s and that was the size of the fridge box. From all our research, it appears they were only big enough to fit one brand of 60L fridge, which didn’t make much sense to me and seemed only to be an inconvenience. But as we have learn’t, it doesn’t matter what camper you choose, you will make a compromise somewhere.
Anyway, Saturday morning came, we excitedly got ready and made our way north to Caboolture. First stop, EasyTrail. These guys where the first ones I found online, they had the smaller camper and we wanted to check it out.
EzyTrail
We pretty much decided once we saw it that the smaller FF’s was not for us. It (and all of them) only had a double bed. Yes the price was good, but the bed was a compromise we couldn’t make. Unfortunately they didn’t have any other FF’s setup for us to see, just caravan’s and at the time, there was only one person there and they were with other customers, so we didn’t get to talk them about our needs. I’ve heard good things about EzyTrail though. It just wasn’t meant to be.
AusTrack
Next we ventured a few doors down to AusTrack. This was more like it. They had more staff working AND all their campers setup in the show room. We bypassed the smaller camper this time as they are also only a double bed and had a look at the Telegraph, a four person FF. This was a few grand more than we wanted to spend, but it had a queen bed. After talking to a sales person and having a good look at it, it was definitely at the top of our list.
AusTrack offered two versions of this camper. The Telegraph and the Telegraph X. Besides the price, the X came with more inclusions. A fridge, hot water system, toilet, TV, Inverter, extra gas plumbing and more. Most of these things we already had, so where only looking at the standard Telegraph at the time.
MDC
After AusTrack, we headed to MDC and were met by a great salesman, I will say as someone that has a sales background, this guy was good, not in a creepy salesman way, but in a friendly way where he listened to what we wanted and pointed us to what we where looking for. We didn’t bother with their small FF here either. MDC had a good price on their camper, but for us, the compromises were too many.
While there we inspected pretty much the only rear-fold camper around. It had it’s benefits, especially when it came to our pup. One thing we are aware of is the age of our dog, he is 11 and finds it hard to get up to high things. So a FF is a concern for us, but we think we will be ok using a ramp or similar to get him inside. The rear-fold, while great for him, just didn’t excite us like the FF’s did and it wasn’t that much cheaper. We also learned that MDC were stopping making them as the demand for them is drying up, as far as campers go, FF’s were it. I should mention that soft floor campers are still popular as the cheap way to get into campers.
CUB CAMPERS
Next stop, CUB Campers. They where further down the highway, but we thought we should check them out. They are Australian built and made, so that was appealing. As you probably have guessed, they were a no-go for us. They cheapest camper, a rear-fold BTW, was $17k more than most of the FF’s we had looked at. Like I said, I have nothing against Australian made campers. But we just couldn’t afford one with way way way more compromises that the FF’s we looked at.
At this point, we went home, armed with a lot of brochures to research some more and find the right camper for us.
And now back to the show
Now, the camping show, or as I titled this post. ‘Camping Show….I mean Caravan show’. Look, I wont say too much about it as this has been a long post anyway, but I will say that if you were looking for a caravan, you would have been in heaven…to a point. There was so many caravan’s that I think I would have been overwhelmed if we were looking for one. We mainly focused on the campers on display (not that there was a whole lot), look at their inclusions, designs and cost. Most we had already seen (including the one we ended up choosing).
We did find one that almost had us second guessing our choice. Stony Creek are their name, they are located out at Ipswich, a little further for us, but not far. They did have a show special on and the camper was impressive. It was about a $1000 more than what we are paying and had some nice inclusions. However, it was also missing a few things that we are getting with ours and for a $1000 less. It made us realise that we had made the right choice.
The main reason I wanted to go to the show was to look for camping nick nacks. I love little things that make camping a little easier, but to be honest. There wasn’t much and we actually had a lot of it already anyway. Some stands had a kinda $2 shop feel to them, just cheap (but not cheap) junk.
We did attend the towing masterclass and off-road masterclass. The towing was enjoyable and while mainly aimed at caravaners, had some application for what we will be towing in a few months and I learnt a number of things. The off-road class was fun to watch as a guy towed a Hybrid camper around a man-made off-road course over and over again, but I didn’t learn as much on that one that I didn’t already know.
We ran into some friends, spent way to much on lunch and headed home. We actually had a good time, learnt some thing and came away confident in our decision.
Come back next week when we reveal our choice.
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