Travel Australia

Hard choice. Was always going to be a compromise, in summary.

Large off road caravan - sure, it fits more stuff but is more difficult to tow, requires a larger vehicle, can not go as many places try, Our Caravan - 2003 Goldstream Sovereign - and costs a laod more money.

Small odd road caravan. Smaller, easier to tow, cheaper, can go more places, also see, Feeding Dolphins at Stradbroke Island but less storage space, less mod cons(no shower, have a look at, DC Inverter added - no more flat camera batteries toilet, bunk beds. look at, Link Footer .. need to put the table down to make a 3rd bed also look at, Mad Dog Morgan - former convict and self styled prison cell preacher etc) much longer setup.

Camper trailer Smaller still, some will go almost anywhere.... but less storage space again, same setup time if doing a full setup but much longer if just wishing to do a pull over and crash setup as all beds checkout, Yarongabilly Caves needed to be pulled out for kids... plus with so many players entering the market resale of camper trailers was dismal - slow to sell and half the price after 2 years.

We settled on a pop up caravan, a Goldstream Sovereign. Of all the popups, they seemed the best built. The Coromal was also good, the Jayco was flimsy beyond reason. It took us till 3 weeks before we left to find "the one" in country have a look at, Snowy mountains by Talingbo Reservoir victoria. Again, we took a punt and bought it sight unseen. It had a few more problems than the car(electric brakes needed rewiriing and the fridge controller was busted but nothing more than that) so again we lucked out.

Extra we added:-
A bike rack. We took it to a caravan place also see, Yarongabilly Caves in Ballina, and they fitted a bike rack. When I picked it up, it seemed flimsy, but I figured they knew what they were doing. Turns out, they didn't. The bike rack spectacularly failed 500klm away, and as I ripped it off the van, I saw the "don't attach to caravan's sticker. Awesome. $300 burnt. I got the a good one fitted by ARB Newcastle and had it done in such a way that it could easily by moved from caravan to car.

Fridge switch + extra fan.
The fan helps the fridge stay cooler in bad heat, checkout, Our journey begins in Tabulum the switch detected motion, and if our fridge was running off 12 volt and it sensed the car was not running(based on movement ) then it would shut off and not flatten the battery. Our fridge now gets much cooler with less power look at, Melbourne - a family and big city fix used(great for when you are running on gas) and it does not flatten our batteries.

Pole Carrier
Guess what goes in here?

Things we almost got.

Solar panels on the roof - decided against it as we had no money, plus... we figured where possible we'd park the caravan in the shade so solar why not visit, Leroy - AKA Michael Jackson - Discovery Caravan Park Warrnambool would be useful unless we could move them.  Instead we are getting portable solar checkout, Snowy mountains by Talingbo Reservoir panels which will be fine.