Doing it on the cheap

Do you really need to spend a motza to go caravanning or camping?

With all the six-figure price tags being bandied about on this website lately, you’d be forgiven for thinking you need a second mortgage to cover the basic needs for family bush camping holidays. Not so.

You only need about $90grand for a full-size family van with off-road underpinnings to ride over the rough outback roads, equipped with enough power, water and provisions to last at least a few weeks off the grid….

Solar, batteries, extra water tanks and pumps to draw in fresh creek water, plus a bigger fridge (or an extra car fridge), a diesel heater for those cold desert nights and a gennie to keep the air-con going on a hot day.

Such a van is going to need a leviathan 4WD to tow it, like a V8-powered 200 Series LandCruiser GXL. That’s about $100,000 with the snorkel option pack, towbar and electric brake controller.

The ‘Cruiser will need basic upgrades for bush work: a bullbar, driving lights, off-road tyres, better suspension, cargo drawers, cargo barrier and a UHF radio. So that’s about another $9000, give or take.

So for about $200,000, you’d have the rig that’ll take you and your kids almost anywhere with just the bare necessities.

Okay, so I’m having a lend.

Touring our great outback can be done for a fraction of the money being splashed around by an increasing number of people that visit caravan and camping shows. And you don’t need to slum it to have a great time camping, and good quality gear to do it with.

You will need a dual-range 4WD though: even though outback roads are closed when there’s a fair bit of precipitation, you don’t want to be halfway through an 80km stretch in a 2WD when the clouds suddenly let go. You’ll spend days digging yourself out. You’ll also miss out on some great camping spots in the mountains and on beaches if you stick to a 2WD too.

A good, reliable used 4WD wagon can be had for around $10,000, or a lot less if you know what you’re looking for and are handy on the tools. I once bought a $750 XJ Jeep Cherokee and after spending another $2000 on it had a bullet-proof 4WD that towed a van for 15,000 trouble-free kays around the bush.

You’ll still need as a basic set-up a bullbar, cargo barrier and off-road tyres (good quality, LT-construction 8- or 10-ply all-terrains), and if you can stretch to it, fresh heavy-duty suspension, a light bar and UHF radio are good inclusions.

There are plenty of used 4WDs that have all this gear on them, but even if they don’t you can set yourself up for around $3500 for the basic set-up or around $5500 for the whole shebang. That’s assuming you use all new parts — don’t skimp on tyres or shocks, they should be fresh, but everything else can be second-hand and you’ll save heaps, especially if you can fit the gear yourself.

What you sleep in depends on how much set-up and pack-up time you’re willing to put up with. Say you want quick and easy: an Oztent can be had for $1500 or less, and it’ll be ready to sleep in 30 seconds. Because the tent’s two metres long packed up, you might have to chuck it on a roof rack, so add another $500 to the bill for a good solid one.

A decent 50-litre fridge, chairs, beds and cooking gear will set you back another $1200, tops, so you’re up for a total of around $18,000 for this scenario: $15,500 for the vehicle and $2500 for the camping gear.

Another option is a roof top tent, which will save you a few hundred bucks on the Oztent but will put a dent in your fuel economy as you drag it around on the roof. So bargain for about $17,500 in this situation.

A camper trailer is a better option to be able to set up camp and then go exploring with your vehicle.

You don’t need an $80K hybrid camper, but a $700 6x4 trailer won’t cut it either. Great for getting rubbish to the tip, but on outback corrugations it will gradually break down into its constituent parts.

About $3K will get you a solidly-built, fully seam-welded trailer with off-road tyres and a seven-leaf spring set-up and off-road coupling. Load your camping gear in the trailer and either use the Oztent or, for a few hundred bucks more spent on the trailer, get it built with a frame that you can fit a roof top tent to it.

Total damage for this camping set-up is about $21 large ($15,500 for the vehicle, $5500 for the trailer and camping gear). If you can learn the ropes about what to look for in a used camper-trailer, you could save about $2000 in this scenario.

You don’t need to buy everything at once, either. You learn what would work and what wouldn’t with a few weekend forays close to home.

But you do need to spend enough so that you’re not constantly having to deal with stuff breaking along the way. But $20K is a long way from $200K and even I could just about afford that.

Doing it on the cheap

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