Part 8 – FINALLY!!!
I have been waiting till after my first trip to update you on the camper. Last weekend, with permission from the wife, I took the Tele X on it’s first trip away (without her, so that’s why I needed permission). But before I get into that, let me tell you about the whirlwind that was 2 weeks ago.
Tuesday night I went to be bed at my normal time, around midnight excited for the next morning. We were picking up our camper trailer and getting the handover form the team at Austrack. Of course I had done lot’s of research and watched their setup videos over and over again, but nothing compares to doing it yourself, even the handover was a blur.
I woke up at 5am to a wet day to take Alison to work for the morning, she was working till 9am and I was to pick her up and head up too Caboolture. Normally I go back to sleep till just after 8am, I then awake and get ready for the work day, but my brain wouldn’t allow it. I lay there, but no sleep was coming. So I got up and did some work knowing my day was going to be a right off anyway.
Today is the day!!!
9am rolled around finally and I pick up Alison and we headed to Caboolture to their showroom. Dylan was doing our handover that day and somehow he got the nickname Dillop, not sure how, but it stuck and we had a good laugh.
Poor old Dillop, must have hated me at first. Because I knew a lot of what he was telling me, I found myself having to bite my tongue to stop from chiming in about everything and after a few minutes, I let him do his job. We had a good laugh during the setup. The handover took about 90 mins. I had a few questions of my own, however Dylan was still new to the role, so he had to ask the senior guys, which of course was all good. A few things had changed since the videos were made so I did learn a few new things.
After we hitched up for the first time, Alison and I headed down to QLD Transport to get the trailer registered to find a very very long line. It wasn’t raining hard at the time, but it was raining lightly. This process took another hour, after which we headed back to Austrack to attach the plates. We shook hands and we headed home.
Now I have been towing trailers since I got my license, but this was defiantly the heaviest trailer I have towed. Thank goodness for the electric brakes on the trailer I say. Made a lot of difference and you can feel the trailer pulling against the car when braking.
The rain couldn’t put out my excitement
The rain put a dampener on things (literally) and so my plans to open the trailer up and do some work inside had to be changed. No worry, I worked on organising the storage compartments. I had a list of mods I wanted to complete before my camping trip and I got one done. Packing was complicated, while this trailer is bigger than our past one, the old one was basically a box trailer with a bed on top, so it had ample room inside. The design of the forward folds doesn’t allow this. So I had to make choices of what to leave out. Which is fine, it’s like when you move house, you do a bit of a cull. There were plenty of things that we no longer needed or never used, so that’s what I did.
The one mod I did get done was attaching the motorised jockey wheel. While I have only done a test run so far, I know this will be very useful once I get the garage organised to once again house the Pajero and camper.
Just set it up already…
The next day I put the camper up on the foot path, and in-between all the neighbours stopping and asking me about it, I setup the inside for the first time. Made sure stereo works, took the foam mattress out and put in the new inner-spring one I had purchased (not easy on your own). I found that while I could open the camper by myself, closing was impossible for me by myself and I also found that I had to use the winch, yes it added to the setup time, but it’s just too heavy with inner-spring mattress. I also took out the poles and sorted them. SO.MANY.POLES!!! It was then I decided that we would be use the gazebo. The thought of setting up all those poles made me tired. I sorted out the ones we would need, the internal poles and the window poles, this really reduced the number by a lot and also will save a lot of weight.
One exciting surprise was the water pump. I had seen many videos of other campers where the water pump sounded like a ratchet gun, but ours was very very very quiet, so quiet in fact that I thought it was broken. I turned the water on and while water was coming out, I couldn’t hear anything. I was thinking that maybe it was just air pushing through the water, but it kept going. I investigated around the other side of the camper and as I got got closer, I could hear the pump, but it was mighty quiet. Very happy about that.
I setup the stove as well and tested that, it all worked.
It was getting dark and as I said before, I couldn’t close the lid by myself. So I picked up Alison and she helped me close it up and put it away.
I think I might save the camping trip story for next week, I think I have written enough here. See you all next week.
Recent Posts
My mum always said, ‘Never have dirty drawers…’
It's video time. I actually posted this a few months ago on Youtube and forgot to put it up here. Anyway, I recently purchased some new drawers for the back [...]
Episode 2: Camping Chairs & Choosing a Camper Trailer
In this episode I review two camping chairs with a high weight rating and also talk through the many types of camper trailers to help you find the one to [...]
I’m back…..and with a podcast
I'm back and have just launched my new podcast as well. You can have a listen here, but you can also subscribe using the below links on either Apple Podcasts [...]