AOR owners on a high

A record 42 owners of Australian Off Road camper trailers, pop-top hybrid and full-height caravans made their way to Victoria’s High Country for the AOR 2014 Owners’ Rally over the last weekend in November.

Expanding on the 19 who attended the inaugural Victorian AOR rally in 2013, the enthusiastic turn-up indicates the strong following the Caloundra, Queensland-based specialist manufacturer now enjoys since owner/founder Steve Budden built his first camper 14 years ago in 2000.

This year’s destination for the five-day rally from November 27-December 1 was Fry’s Hut in the Howqua Hills area, 22km south-east of Merrijig at the foot of Mount Buller.

It’s a magical area for bush campers and off-road enthusiasts, with a series of free camping areas following the Howqua River, with basic drop toilets and formed concrete fire pits being the only facilities. You bring your own firewood and water and take away your own rubbish.

None can be pre-booked and there are no defined sites, so Rally organiser John Robinson ensured he arrived early to peg out enough spaces for the attendees – mostly well-travelled couples in their fifties and sixties from all states except the Northern Territory.

Built in the 1940s, Fry’s Hut is one of many similar slab timber huts in the Victorian High Country, all built originally to provide sometimes life-saving shelter for the mountain cattlemen who grazed their cattle herds on the lush summer pastures, or for those working at mining sites.

Today, with recreational pursuits now the main activities in the Alps, they are mostly used by skiers and bushwalkers.

Apart from the numbers that attended, the interesting thing about the make-up of the 2014 AOR Rally was that ‘hybrid’ pop-top campers – most equipped with inside combined shower/toilets – greatly outnumbered traditional AOR canvas-roofed, hard-floor campers.

Although it grew on the success of its campers, AOR these days only produces its traditional campers to special order, with Bidden believing the future for specialist Australian manufacturers lies in increasingly comfortable full-height single and tandem axle remote area caravans.

A number of AOR’s insulated and fully-equipped Matrix full-height caravans were amongst the attendees, however AOR’s new tandem-axle Aurora caravan did not materialise as hoped, as Budden and his wife Rhonda were unable to take the necessary time out from their business to bring the company’s latest product.

Ironically, AOR owners through their very active online AOR Forum, helped design the Aurora, with some 1500 responses helping to shape its size, features and finally even its name. All AOR needed to do was distil their thoughts and work out how to build it to a price!

Once camped at Fry’s Hut, the AOR owners enjoyed a welcome ‘Pirate’s Night’ dinner, where everyone cooked a meal and then shared it with others.
A 4WD tag-along tour to the Mt.Buller and Mt. Stirling area, with visits to Clear Hills and Craig’s Hut, was another shared activity by Rally participants, who interestingly paid no attendance fee.

Hard costs, such as the marquee hire and give-away prizes to attendees, were covered by Australian Off road.

Meanwhile, caravancampingsales.com.au gate-crashed the rally with a 16ft Elite Dirty Harry caravan in tow, so stay turned for a review of the compact, off-road model...