Michael Browning•24 Mar 2017

FEATURE

Top-10 caravan calamities

Caravanning -- what could possibly go wrong? Plenty it seems, but it all adds up to a few good yarns around the campfire

We all take care to ensure that we are ‘travel ready’ before hitching up our caravan or camper for a trip, but sometimes despite our best efforts, things don’t always go to plan.

Here are 10 ways they didn’t but I’m sure you have some of your own. So please send them in…

1. UNHITCHED #1

It was all going well on the unsealed road from Hope Vale to Laura on the southern end of Cape York until I felt the ‘thud’ after a few corrugations.

If I ever had any doubt about the wisdom of crossing your chains in order to cradle the hitch should it ever leave the tow car, they were immediately dispelled instantly.

The A-frame of the big Coronet off-road van was under the back of my Disco, still hanging from the chains, but as it happened at less than 15km/h instead of the 80km/h on the straight stretch leading up to the corrugations, things could have been different.

The Coronet’s excellent Trail-a-Mate jack solved the problem quickly, raising the van via the van’s central A-frame clamps to pop it back on the pin and this time it stayed put for the next 4000km on and off-road.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Don’t push the black ‘lock’ button on a DO-35 hitch until the tow car is supporting the weight of the van fully, without help from its jockey wheel.

If the jockey hasn’t retracted and you’re too quick on the trigger, you can inadvertently ‘mis-lock’ the hitch so that the locking slide actually shuts on the lower half of the hitch’s pin instead of engaging the locking groove. Come to think of it, I never heard the telltale and very definite ‘click’.

2. UNHITCHED #2

Sounds like I make a habit of this, I know, but turning right out of a friend’s property on the Ord River in Kununurra (WA) a few years earlier, I also found the A-frame of the Jayco Expanda I was towing on the ground, instead of the ball of a Nissan Pathfinder.

While my wife and I were scratching our heads and bums respectively trying to work out how to raise more than 200kg back on the Pathy’s ball, two guys in a local shire ute rocked up.

‘No problem’, they said after seeing the problem, lifting it back on the ball as though picking up an empty Maccas box.

MORAL: Who needs a jack when you’ve got mates like that?

3. PUNCTURE PROBLEMS #1

The Central Australian Railway that carried freight on the original Ghan train from Marree to Alice Springs hasn’t run since the end of 1980, but that doesn’t mean a train still can’t clobber you… if you’re unlucky.

The problem is that the remnants of the red gum sleepers that supported the historic narrow gauge track laid in 1883 make excellent firewood in an area not overly noted for its forests. So the ones that are left are more often seen on the roof racks of 4WDs plying the Oodnadatta Track than on the mound that carried the railway.

Main problem is that some of the massive rail spikes are still embedded in the sleepers and lose their grip on the corrugations, making their way via a bloody big hole into tyres like mine if you’re unlucky and have a fully-laden Jayco Dove Outback camper trailer hitched in tow.

It wasn’t all bad news though. While trying to get the jack of our Ssangyong Musso out to change tyres, one of those helpful blokes in Series I Land-Rovers stopped with enough gear on board to carry out a full mechanical overhaul on our faux-Mercedes-Benz if we’d allowed him the time. We were nearly bowled over by their enthusiasm!

He and his mate couldn’t wait to pull out their toys and change the wheel for us, but the next best bit was at the servo at Marree where the mechanic somehow managed to plug the 20 cent size hole in the tyre. To this day, 16 years on, it hasn’t lost any pressure, although it’s so far out of balance it’s almost unusable!

And the rail spike is still a great memory of a ‘raily’ good time sat on our fireplace hearth.

MORAL: Make new friends when you get a flat, get your punctures repaired in Marree and keep a good look out for souvenir spikes!

4. PUNCTURE PROBLEMS #2

Isn’t it surprising that most flat tyres happen to the rear wheels of a tow car at the most inconvenient times? Not really.

Fact is your rear tyres are doing the heavy lifting, whether it’s all the crap you have in your boot or the back of your 4WD, or shouldering the weight of your overladen A-frame. Every bump in the road is magnified, grinding your rubber deeper into the stony surface and driving flinty stones between the grooves as the vehicle accelerates forward.

This is the best reason to put your meatiest tyres on the rear in order to keep the vulnerable tyre surface as far out of harm as possible.

We’ve had several flat tyres on the rear of tow cars and three rules always apply: the jack is buried, somewhere, so you have to off-load everything in the dust/mud/rain (take your choice) to get it out; as you’ve pulled off the road the overloaded rear end is so low you can’t get it under the vehicle; then if it’s a wind-down spare wheel there’s no room to drag it out from under the vehicle anyway!

MORAL: Sit tight until another traveler arrives and make new friends.

5. FUEL FOR THOUGHT

If you haven’t run out of fuel on a trip, you haven’t travelled… well, you haven’t travelled the way we do, anyway!

We thought we could cover more than 800km of mostly lonely corrugations on the Tanami Track one year on two tanks of fuel and two jerry cans towing a 2.4 tonne caravan, but fell a jerry short of Tilmouth Roadhouse at the southern end. But we held an ace card – a six-pack of Coopers Sparkling Ale that was more value than ‘unobtainium’ in ‘dry’ Halls Creek from where we had come.

The fellow traveler in the Pajero who we flagged down heading north thought that 20 litres of diesel worth $2.60 a litre at one of the two remote Aboriginal communities further up the Track was a fair swap for the Coopers and so did we. Made our six-pack worth about $32!

MORAL: Always carry beer to drink or barter.

6. UFO

Everyone knows not to camp under red gums. So we didn’t and it was a lesser Eucalypt instead that shed a large branch on our campsite at the caravan park in Port Douglas.

It dropped like a spear through the awning, which tagged its tail and sent it spearing into the side of the New Age caravan we were testing.

People gathered, told us how lucky we were to have been down the beach and took lots of photos for social media. I think the caravan park, their insurance company and New Age are still squabbling over who should pay what. We simply removed the van, applied some (thankfully matching) silver tape to cover the hole in the side of the van and joined our many newfound caravanning friends at Happy Hour.

MORAL: Sir Isaac Newton got it right with his theory, but any excuse to join Happy Hour.

7. GOING BACKWARDS

Everyone has a good reversing story, but it’s usually at someone else’s expense.

Like the time you flattened your rear neighbor’s clothesline or kid’s bicycle while backing onto our site. Or what about the time you tagged your neighbor’s annexe guy ropes, spoiling an otherwise brilliant berthing manoeuvre?

The problem with going on site at a caravan park is that it’s an unrivalled spectator sport, so the first rule is ‘arrive early’ while everyone is at the beach, rather than after they have settled into their folding chairs with drinks and nibbles to enjoy the evening’s ‘entertainment’.

Your new neighbors are, of course, very helpful. Mostly all at once and with contradictory advice.

And your partner – no sexism here – is usually the worst. ‘A bit more’ can mean just about anything, with a usual tolerance plus or minus a metre or two – backwards or sideways!

MORAL: Walk your site first with your caravan around the corner to ensure you (a) spot any traps, and (b) no one is watching. Then send your partner to the shop while you get help from the vastly experienced caravan park operator who has a vested interest in you leaving his taps, power boxes and landscaping intact and doesn’t give a stuff how hopeless you are. He might even hop in and do it for you.

8. COOKING CAPERS

Gas leaks can be fatal, but lowering the glass cover on a still red-hot cooktop inside your caravan can be spectacular! I heard the explosion of safety glass and it took us half an hour to find all the pieces on the floor and embedded into the walls and upholstery.

MORAL: Read the instructions when all else fails. Don’t lower the glass until the cooktop is off and cold.

9. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED

If you’re like me, you always believe your ‘Low fuel’ warning light is inaccurate and you’ve really got a lot more kilometres in your tank than the gauge needle hammering the empty pin indicates. This rule doesn’t necessarily apply to cassette toilets in caravans, where ‘Full’ can really mean ‘Full’!

I’ve found out the hard way and it’s fairly soul destroying to be half inside the shute mopping up the mess while your neighbors look on smugly with that ‘better you than me’ look.

MORAL: The key to successful cassette emptying is to do it first thing in the morning or after dark when either there are few people around, or it’s too dark for everyone to see that you really live a normal life. And please use the Dump Point rather then your neighbor’s grey-water trough!

10. ‘SLIDER’ SHENANIGANS

The explosion of sliding lounge or bedroom wall caravans (you can get them on just about every Jayco caravan model now) has caught many older caravan parks by surprise, as their narrow sites were never intended to house a behemoth than can pump itself up like a bullfrog at the touch of an electric switch.

More important, the advent of ‘sliders’ necessitates a whole new chapter in the caravanners’ etiquette book. For example, make sure your neighbors are out of range before deploying your slide to either pin them, their Weber or their clothes line, to the side of their van.

MORAL: Remember that your bedroom or lounge room housing your portable home cinema will now be about a metre closer in earshot to them. Be modest and discreet.

Most importantly, be sure you retract your slider before flattening the surrounding shrubbery and be careful of sleeping pets.

Top-10 caravan calamities

Tags