Tested: OzPig Traveller

Portable campfires come in all shapes and sizes, but while they are good at providing a bit of warmth at night, few also address the need to cook.

That’s where the Ozpig Traveller comes to the party. It’s a compact camp stove made with cooking in mind but with the added benefit of being versatile enough to build a warming fire.

Overview

Ozpig was an idea born of necessity. The Queensland-based, family-owned camp stove maker was born after its founders, Allan and Assunta Shepherd, realised a lot of campsites did not allow open fires.

The idea was to create something that could pack down in itself, yet be versatile enough to act as both a heater and a cooktop.

The OzPig Traveller is a cut-down version of the original OzPig camp stove. Like the original, the Traveller is designed to pack down inside itself.

Son Anthony now runs the business, which has expanded to the campsite-friendly Ozpig Series 2, the backyard-focussed Big Pig, and the subject of our test, the highly mobile Ozpig Traveller.

Price and equipment

You can pick up the Ozpig Traveller for $349 direct from the manufacturer, although the company has stitched up a deal with outdoors lifestyle specialist BCF to sell it via its retail stores. I picked up my Ozpig on special at BCF for less than $300.

In the box are the Ozpig, four zinc-coated screw-in legs, a removable hotplate and a three-section chimney. Included are a spark arrestor – a fine mesh grille that minimises sparks coming out of the chimney – a steel fire grate and a hotplate hook. It all comes with a carry bag.

You can add a number of accessories to the Ozpig including a grill that swaps out with the hotplate, a 3.0-litre kettle that clips onto the chimney, and a vented door.

As we planned on using our Ozpig traveller under an awning, we ordered an elbowed flue extension.

The extra gear is not cheap. The dogleged flue cost us $75, while the kettle is $99 – we’ll stick with the billy. An absolute necessity is the $39.99 chargrill that can replace the cooktop and make the best steaks you’ve ever eaten.

Design and engineering

There’s not too much involved in the Ozpig Traveller. It’s a long 2.5mm thick welded pressed steel cylinder supported on four screw-in legs with a lidded box on top, and a chimney drawing out the back. The welding is all even, although only on the exterior – no seams are welded on the inside.

The rounded, barrel-shaped firebox has a simple swinging door mechanism that allows you to control the airflow according to how wide the door is open, but with a hole in the centre so that you can bank the fire overnight.

At the top of the Ozpig Traveller is a large rectangular box section with a removable hotplate with a handle and two pins that drop into brackets welded onto the side to secure it in place. Similar brackets are welded to each side of the Ozpig, so if you’re not using the plate as a cooktop, you can use it as a side table.

The chimney is made from 2.0-inch car exhaust pipe flanged at one end so it slots together. The spark arrestor clips in over the top of it.

The elbow in the flue – it’s two parts but is notched so it can’t twist – upsets the balance of the Ozpig slightly, but there is a bracket on it so you can brace it using a height-adjustable tent pole.

Everything is finished in a heat-resistant matte black finish. You can keep things looking good by spraying the whole thing with cooking oil between uses.

The Ozpig is designed to be easy to set up. It is certainly that.

How it works

You’re lugging a bit of weight around with the Ozpig. It’s well made, and everything packed down light weighs 16 kilograms – a significant amount. Our elbowed flue added almost another kilogram, and we won’t count the tent pole or welding gloves we added to make the Ozpig more manageable.

Once it is set up, the Ozpig stands 1600mm tall with the three sections of flue that come standard. The elbow adds almost another metre to the height and moves it back by around 500mm. That half-metre displacement is perfect for pulling the Ozpig under an awning if it starts raining, with only the top section of the flue exposed to the elements.

The door’s opening is 260mm in diameter, large enough to put some decent-sized bits of wood into the Ozpig’s firebox. However, the box is relatively short, meaning that if you’re using an electric chainsaw to right-size timber, you’re going to have to make a lot of cuts. Factor that into whether you go for that second chainsaw battery.

What’s likeable about the Ozpig is that you can really get it cranking. Open the door, remove the hotplate and add wood from the top and the unit becomes an awesome firepit, throwing out copious amounts of heat.

Similarly, bank it up and modulate the heat using the door and you can make perfect bacon and eggs.

The included handle is good for opening and closing the circular door to the firebox, or swapping from the hotplate to the grill on the fly. These last two can clip onto either side of the firebox – the hotplate can then become a slow cooker.

Lighter and more portable

The Ozpig Traveller is also easy to move around – remove the flue, use a couple of decent branches to slip under the Ozpig to pick it up, and two people can easily relocate it out of the weather.

Problems? There are a few. The first is that you’re going to have to devise some way of catching all the ash and coals that dribble out the front of the Ozpig Traveller, as certain campsite managers will frown on you burning holes in their carefully tended grass. An ash catcher is another $30 spend unless you can come up with an alternative – which we did.

We’re also not so sure of the durability of the fire grate that lifts the coals off the base of the firebox and lets air circulate. We’re a couple of fires in and already the grate is starting to buckle. A replacement is $15, but we might source something a bit hardier.

The main problem for us, though, is the screw-in legs. The thread on them is too fine, making them difficult to attach. We also worked out pretty quickly that you don’t screw them all the way in because they will seize once the metal collar heats and contracts; instead, unscrew them a quarter turn so they stay loose. Otherwise, keep a set of multigrips handy.

The default bag also could be better. It’s open-topped so unless the Ozpig Traveller is packed in tightly, it will tip over the first time you take a corner and spill everything out. The bag really needs a zip top, or at least a couple of webbing straps and clips to keep it all contained.

Creole builds up in the flue quite easily, so you’ll need to clean the sections out each time they are used. Once they have heated and cooled down, the joins can be a bit difficult to separate, but tap them lightly on a tree to break the seal and they eventually work apart.

Verdict

The Ozpig Traveller is a great alternative for anyone who, like us, prefers to cook outside and wants an alternative to gas.

Building the perfect Ozpig Traveller set-up to suit your needs can be expensive, but compared with a twin-burner LPG gas cooker it’s a simple and cost-effective alternative for off-grid cooking and heating.

Based on our experience, though, the Ozpig still isn’t quite perfect. But with a bit of refinement, it could come close to being that.

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