Australia has some pretty rugged country so naturally people have devised some pretty ingenious ways of getting around it in comfort and style, like this. The Tvan is a rugged, two berth trailer camper that fixes a lot of problems with existing campers. To start with it’s go-anywhere, seriously go-anywhere.

You’d expect nothing less from a company that builds trailers used by the Australian Army, Navy and Airforce. It has a 1,600kg fully articulated coupling that can angle up or down 30�, great for getting out of steep gullies. There’s also state-of-the-art hard core coil spring suspension. It has electric brakes and it’s own park brake so you know you’ll find it where you left it and best of all it can carry 500kg of cargo.

By far the most novel thing about the Tvan is the storage of the tent. In existing designs of camper trailers, the tent packs in over the bed and so if you have to break camp in the rain, your bed gets wet. The Tvan has a separate sealed tent storage area so the wet tent is kept away from the inside of the trailer. To set it up, the tail gate drops down giving the tent a hard floor and you then erect the tent over it. All done in about 3 minutes. The trailer sleeps two with a queen sized mattress and there’s plenty of storage inside and hard walls around you so it’s comfy and very water proof. If the weather is too much to put up the tent, just drop the tail gate, raise the hatch, climb into bed and shut the hatch, 20 seconds and you’re dry and in bed.

So getting there and accommodation is sorted, how about the creature comforts? Well, it has a 70L stone-proof water tank with the option for a second 70L tank with hand and electric pump. It can hold two 4kg gas cylinders and five 20L jerry cans. There’s a slide-out two-burner stove with sink and cutlery drawer. There’s options for CD/AM/FM radio, 100AH battery with 50W solar cell and battery charger, internal lighting, external plug-in power socket and a rack for carrying firewood. The only thing it doesn’t come with is a fridge.

All this reliability comes at quite a price, around $AU35,000 depending on which model you choose. It also seems they’re not available outside of Australia just yet but if you’re looking to go outback down here, you might want to look up one to hire.

The Tvan is an extraordinary camper trailer that provides unrivalled levels of comfort, equipment and performance. Quite simply, the Tvan is the best camper trailer available today. Tvan has been specifically designed to eliminate common problems inherent with flip-over type campers, which stow the tent on the bed. Unlike the flip-over style campers the Tvan stores its canvas tent neatly into the rear hatch, which allows you to keep your bed made up and everything nice and dry.

Tags: tvan, camper+trailer, offroad+camper