SAGE ADVICE REQUIRED

[jonesboy]

Sacreligious it may seem, but my wife and I have not succumbed to the desire to purchase a SUV/4WD along with an off-road camper trailer to traverse our wide brown land.
We are in our middle sixties and have become strangely addicted to the civilising influence of bitumen roads, hot showers and flushing toilets. We are obviously in the minority.
Nevertheless, not blessed with the finances to travel overseas etc, we still wish to do our fair share around Oz.
We are also quite attached to our vehicle, a manual 2012 Mazda 3, unbraked towing capacity of 500kg and braked of 900kg.
It goes in next week for towbar and electric brake controller fitting.
Our situation is this:- restricted as we are by the desire to keep our vehicle for the majority of time it will not be pulling a trailer, we have narrowed our options down to a braked, hard floor camper trailer.
The phrase "on-road" is apparently a foreign concept to virtually all camper trailer importers/manufacturers.
You may see where we are going with this.
We have tentatively settled on a Cub Kamparoo Weekender (455kg) or Supamatic escape (560kg), not wishing to stress our car unnecessarily.
By way of interest, our search for second hand versions of these units has revealed them to be as scarce as a football player without tattoos.
We live in Cairns and intend to travel to Brisbane in the June school holidays in a forlorn search to but a used unit, but failing this, order a new one from Cub.
Basically, we would appreciate any comments on our cunning plan, favourable or otherwise, alternate suggestions and whether we may be just better off buying one of those charming retirement village units.
Salutations.

[robcaz]

We do have a few members in NSW who own a 2wd or soft roader 4wd with an on road camper & attend weekend meets.

Cub's usually get snapped up very quickly on the secondhand market. As well as our Camper Trader page http://www.campertrailers.org/camper_trader.htm check out the Caravan & Camping sales website http://www.caravancampingsales.com.au

[CQuinn]

Hi Jonesboy, I cant argue with you over the appeal of a flushing toilet and a hot shower and while major highways offer little appeal a bitumen road does provide an easy trip. There is so much to see of this great country while keeping to the black stuff plus average gravel roads don't require serious off road components. while I don't have a Cub I think your choice is a sound one. There are some fabulous caravan parks / overnight stops in the smaller towns and private properties that provide a comfortable experience without the "highrise" type living of "Big4" type places.
As Rob has said there are a number of 2WD campers in the group and the majority of the group meets are 2WD friendly.
The Mazda 3 will require you to be careful with weight and you may notice a considerable performance impact and I wonder if towing 800+kg will increase overall wear and tear. I have a Subaru Forester towing an Avan with about 1200kg, well within the towing max and I have just replaced the CV joints. with only 75K KM the mechanic was very surprised and I wonder if the towing is the culprit.

What ever you decide .... just do it because the retirement village can wait. Nothing wrong with a retirement village as long as you have space for the cub .

Craig Quinn

[robcaz]

Another lightweight you might like to have a look at is the Pod Compact Camper http://podtrailer.com.au/

[jonesboy]

Thanks for the advice - all very sage-like.

We made the trip down to Bris Vegas last week and have ordered a new Supamatic Escape Touring fitted with electric brakes, to collect next school holidays.

The constraints imposed by our vehicle certainly narrowed the field down somewhat.

Also surprising was the almost complete lack of second hand camper trailers at the major dealers.

Jonesboy