How do you rate Chinese made tents?
Chinese made tents are usually about half the price of Australian made camper trailer tents. They look quite attractive on a brochure or a website photo and appear to be good value. We looked at many Chinese made tents and found the quality usually vastly inferior to Australian made tents. To begin with the canvas is usually very light weight. You often see daylight through the imported canvas. The stitching tends to be inferior and quite often gets undone. The poles are quite flimsy and bent easily. The set up is often very complicated and the structural integrity is low. Go to a camp site when it rains and see how many imported tents have a tarp on it. If they are really that great, would the owners really bother with the effort to put a tarp on? We only use heavy duty 15 oz Australian made Dynaproofed Wax Converters Canvas. The canvas is specially treated for Australian conditions, absolutely waterproof, UV resistant and if looked after properly will last 20 years plus. I doubt that you get more than a few years out of a Chinese made tent. So you may up spending more in the long run with an imported tent.

Are all Australian made tents the same?
The vast majority of Australian manufacturers use Australian made canvas so you will most likely get material made for Australian conditions. However, canvas comes in different weights such as 15 oz, 12 oz, 10 oz and 8 oz. A good tent should have the best and heaviest canvas possible, ie. 15 oz for both roof and walls. This provides the best protection against the weather, makes it absolutely waterproof and provides the best insulation. Amazingly, not all Australian manufactuers go that far. Very often, they use 15 oz canvas for the roof and only 12 oz for the walls. Some even try to save even more money and go for 10 oz roofs and 8 oz walls. We only use 15 oz dynaproofed canvas for both roof and walls to give you the best quality, most waterproof and longest lasting tent.

Trailer Finish: Painting vs galvanising vs powder coating. Which one do you prefer and why?
A trailer needs an appropriate finish to prevent it from rusting. During galvanising the raw steel trailer is put into a hot zinc bath thus covering the entire trailer with a zinc coating. This makes the trailer relatively rust proof but adds additonal cost to the trailer. The additonal cost ranges from about $ 500 to $ 900 depending on the trailer size and current zinc price. The zinc bath is done at very high temperature which will warp the trailer panels, particularly the floor, and make the parts quite uneven. Galvanised trailer look quite nice and shiny when new but over time the finish will look a bit dull. The biggest threat to a trailer, particularly an off road trailer, are stone chips. Even a galvanised trailer will rust if stone chips pierce the zinc coating. Powder coating is an enamel finish (like in a motor car) which is hardened in a baking process. Itg add about $ 500 to the cost of a trailer. It looks really nice and provides good rust protection until stone chips damage the coating and expose raw steel. Unlike traditonal paint you cannot easily fix the stone damage. In order to properly treat the coating the entire poweder coating finish has to be sand blasted off and re-applied and baked at significant additional cost. Traditional painting, if and only if done properly, is our preferred way of protecting a trailer. We use duragel SHS and RHS steel (rust treated similar to galvanising), black steel and zinc anneal steel for the panels. Once welded together, the trailer is carefully cleaned and then etch primed with a quality automotive primer. Once thoroughly dried we apply two coats of hammertone paint. The underbody is treated with special rust fighter, a rubbery, black, automotive coat. It is extremely resistant to stone chips and virtually unpenetrable providing a high degree of protection. A well built stone guard will reduce the stone damage in off road use but some damage will be done which, if untreated, can lead to problems in the long run. We check our hire trailers carefully after every hire and patch up any damage with a spray can of hammertone paint if necessary. If you look after your trailer, check for chips and touch up once or twice a year your properly painted trailer will continue to look good, stay rust proof and will provide many years of use.

How heavy should the suspension of my trailer be?
In order to keep costs at realistic levels we use leaf springs for the suspension of our trailers. We do not use the cheaper slipper springs (they are fixed on one end and moveable on the other anchor point) as there is a risk that the moveable part will snap out. We only use eye to eye rebound springs which are bolted on both ends to the trailer chassis. Our standard configuration uses 5 leaves. This is - according to the spring manufactuer - the correct number of springs for the fully laden weight of our trailers in a standard configuration. We will increase the number of leaves to 7 or sometimes even 9 if the particular set up of the trailer requires it, for example if we fit a rack for a boat and an outboard motor. We see in the market place very often trailers which to our understanding are oversprung, i.e. too many springs are put into the suspension relatively to the total weight of the trailer. An oversprung trailer bounces around off road and does not provide the right suspension level but is just too hard. We take the time to find out how much you will load onto the trailer and will provide you with the right (not to heavy - not too light) level of suspension. More is not always better!

Do I need brakes?
According to Australian Design Rules every trailer exceeding a total weight of 750 kg has to be equipped with brakes. However, you must also consider the "unbraked" towing weight of your particular tow vehicle. You fnd this number in the user manual of your car. Medium sized cars tend to have less than 750 kg of unbraked tow weight. Our trailers weigh somewhere between 520 kg for a on road trailer incl tent but no annex walls, to 640 kg for an off road trailer. This leaves 230 kg for the road and 110 kg for the off road camper trailer before you are above the limit. Load up your trailer with a Drifta Kitchen and storage box (70 kg), 3 Jerry cans of water (60 kg), 2 gas bottles full (20 kg), cuttlery, crockery, pots, pants, chairs, table, annex walls, fire wood, axe, lights etc. and you will most certainly be above the 750 kg weight limit. You'll be breaking the law towing it without brakes and the insurance company may not pay out in case of an accident if you are above the brake limit. We therefore equip all our trailers with brakes as standard. No shortcut here for your and your children's safety!

Should I go for electrical or mechanical brakes?
All our trailers come equipped with mechanical override brakes as standard. Mechanical brakes are easy to use and you do not need a brake controller in your car to operate them. This way you can lend your trailer to friends and family whose car is not equipped with a brake controller. There is no need to adjust the brake controller and these brakes are just "set and forget" (but don't forget to put back down the over centre latch after reversing!). They are either on or off, not particularly sophisticated but fine in most instances. Electrical brakes give you more options to set up through the in car brake controller. You can set the brake strength and the speed the brakes kick in and you operate the trailer brakes only from inside the car. This comes in handy when you are on slippery terrain downhill where the trailer pushes the tow vehicle (but not enough for the mechanical brakes to kick in.)

Whih hitch should I go for?
Road trailers tend to have the standard trailer hitch for a 50 mm tow ball and are just fine for road use. If you use your trailer off road, however, you need more articulation than a standard road hitch allows and you should definately go for an off road hitch. Our off road camper trailers come as standard with an Trigg Polybloc coupling which allows ample articulation in all directions, perfect for off road use. The hitch is attached to the towbar with a special connector and it is virtually impossible to lose the trailer. Some people find the polybloc coupling a bit more difficult to hitch, particularly in uneven terrain. We provide for those people either the Hyland Hitch (works like a standard hitch but with unlimited articulation, requires a 3.5 t tow ball), a McHitch Hitch (the new boy on the bloc, in bright yellow using a landcruiser universal joint to provide the articulation) or a DO 35 Hitch (probably the easiest to set up but only available for electric brakes). All these off road hitches work fine and it is just a question of personal preference!

Are stoneguards worth their money?
If you are off road, the rear tyres of the tow vehicle will eventually throw up stones which can easily ricochet back to the town vehicle. If you are unlucky (and eventually you will be) a stone will hit the back window of your 4 WD and damage it so that the window has to be replaced. The replacement cost is somewhere between $ 700 to $ 1000 and that's only for one window! A stoneguard cost a few hundred dollars and will reduce the risk of window damage drastically. So if you intend to use your off road trailer off road (and isn't it for that that you bought an off road trailer in the first place) you should seriously consider a quality stoneguard.

Should I go for a tropical roof?
Many trailer manufacturers today provide as an option a tropical roof, i.e. a second layer of canvas on top of the main tent providing about 5 cm to 10 cm clearance between the main roof and the tropical roof. The idea behind is that the inside of the tent does not heat up that much as the room between the two canvas layers lets the air flow through and thus acts as an insulator. The drawback are additional cost and a more difficult set up. If not done properly a tropical roof will move around too much as soon as wind picks up somewhat. We are not great fans of tropical roofs (but can incorporate one for you if you wish). Our tent has one of the highest roof lines in the market with straight walls throughout giving you this extra head room. Hot air will rise up, away from where you sleep. Moreover, we use wider mesh than usual with more windows throughout the tent so that the air can circulate very easily, keeping the entire inside of the tent relatively pleasant even in the hottest conditions.

Do I need an extra kids room?
A kids room is an additional tent structure zipped onto the main trailer tent for the kids to play and sleep without disturbing mom & dad. Sounds like a good idea (and we can do it for you easily!) but there are some drawbacks: Kids rooms are quite expensive (ours is $ 1950), they require more time to set up and they are usually not used frequently. The idea of a camper trailer is to provide a quick getaway and easy set up. The more stuff you have the more time the set up takes and the less often you go out. (That's what usually happens with the big family tent!) Once kids get into the teens they want their own tent, away form mom and dad, and later on, they don't want to come at all. A 12 foot family tent is still quick to set up and extremely spacious. Put in a set or two of quality bunk beds, make sure the kids are reasonably tidy and you'll find a kids room unncessary. A more flexible alternative would be to buy them a separate tent, perhaps a classical tourer tent, let them put it up themselves and you only take it with you if needed.

What kitchen / storage should I choose?
Most of you will already have camping and kitchen gear and you may want to use this - at least at the beginning - if you are on a budget. In order to access the inside of the trailer relatively easily and to avoid that all your gear moves around the trailer we suggest to get a few tubs to store all you gear in these tubs. This is not the most practical but certainly the least expensive way to do it. Some manufacturers fit gas struts on the bed base so that you can easily lift the trailer. We can do this for you for an additional cost but this is not our preferred option. This lifting of the bed base only works when the tent is put down. Moreover, most of us don't have long enough arms to reach the opposite side of the inside of the trailer. Most of the time the trailer will be dirty and you'll have to bend over a dirty trailer. Gas strutts are either too heavy (easy lift, very hard to put down) or too light (easy put down but hard to lift). Tents tend to be heavy (around 200 kg) and gas struts sometimes leak and there is a risk that the heavy bed base falls on you just when you want to access the trailer. My preferred storage / kitchen solution is the Drifta Package deal set up. Drifta is a company specialising in camper trailer kitchens made out of marine plywood. They are relatively light, flexible, easy to maintain and oh so practical. The package deal has a large storage box which goes the entire length of the trailer. It slides on marine sliders (spray a bit of silicon spray on the trailer floor for an easier run) and has pull out legs. The storage box is large enough to store all your camping gear such as chairs, broom, axe, shove, gas lights etc. and is easily accessable if the tent if up or down. The kitchen slides out all the way, has room for a three burner stove, a plastic sink and a hand water pump to connect to the water tank of the trailer, lots of drawers, ample cupboard space and a large work bench. It stands on fold out adjustable legs. Once you slide the kitchen into the trailer there is room for a pantry box. Take it out before you leave for your getaway, bring it into your kitchen and fill it up with your dry food. All easy, practical, not too heavy and fairly inexpensive. An alternative to the slide out set up is a tailgate kitchen, either from Drifta in marine plywood or in stainless steel. You save a few hundred dollars on such a set up but the tailgate kitchen will get somewhat into the way to easily access the interior of the trailer.

Do I need a high tonneau cover?
Yes, absolutely. The nice thing about a camper trailer is that you can leave all your camping gear packed up, ready to go in the trailer. You decide to go, pack your clothes, some food for the first night, some beer and chardonnay and off you go! In our hire business we tend to put on top of the trailer, once the tent is folded up, a large trestle table, annex walls, poles, bunk bed / thermarest mattresses and a step ladder. Add to this a solar panel and you can imagine that you need a high tonneau cover to be able to easily cover everything up. Nothing worse than pushing and shuffling to desperately try to close a tonneau cover which is too tight. All our trailers come with an extra high tonneau cover at no extra charge!

What makes the Great Aussie Camper trailer special?
We are passionate about camping, going bush and enjoying the Great Outdoors. We are proud of our product and enjoy competing in the market place for your business with a quality product, simple designs that work in real life, all the necessary inclusions you would need and we try to get this to you at a realistic price. Yes, there are cheaper ones out there which appear better value, particularly if you only see a photo on a website or in a magazine. However, we urge you to touch and feel the trailer and imagine how much time you would need to set it up. How long would it last? How easy would it be to sell a cheaper trailer? Questions you will have to answer for yourself.

Great Aussie Campers is in the Quality - Value end in the market. We get you a basic trailer with all necessary inclusions at a competitive price, no shortcuts, and an extensive option list to spec up the trailer to your needs, preferences and budget.

The Great Aussie Trailer features are:
Fully welded, properly sealed
Primed and painted with hammertone paint, easy to touch up
Rust fighter - automotive undercoat underneath trailer to mitigate stone damage
long drawbar
full chassis
new rims standard
new tyres standard
eye to eye springs (no slippers) standard
spare wheel on the back (for better balance)
brakes standard
off road hitch standard (for off road trailer)
aluminium checkerplate toolbox (lockable with gas strut) standard
10' jockey wheel standard (for off road trailer)

The Great Aussie Tent features are:
Australian Made dynaproofed canvas
15 oz, roof and walls
9' wide floor (12' option)
recessed high density European Queen foam mattress
straight walls throughout
extra high roof line
Heavy duty wide mesh for ample air flow
Zip off heavy duty PVC floor
Under trailer draft skirt standard
Kitchen wall standard
8' wide annex with gable
Galvanised spreader bar & pegs
Aluminium cam lock spreader bars and pegs
All guy ropes with tension springs

The trailer is supplied with brackets for a water tank for easy retrofitting. The tent and annex have zippers for annex walls to add later.