Heaslip camper trailer

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Hi Trevor, We have been planning a 12 month trip around Oz for many months now and have looked a bucket loads of camper trailers. I met and spoke with Rob & Judy Heaslip at great length when they were in Perth for the last caravan & camping show. They are top notch folk and were very helpful both at the show and afterwards, responding to all my many emails and phone calls. The Heaslip is a fantastic unit. I doubt that a tank shell would put a dent in it. The canvas work is the best I have seen anywhere and if you get the extended tent you can sleep an army in there !. It has a fantastic arrangement for carrying a tinnie and outboard. BUT, the most significant thing about the Heaslip is, it has the best organised and most usable kitchen and storage facilities of ANY of the campers we have looked at. I hassled Rob many times about the dust/water proofing on the camper. I was particulary interested in water penetration during river crossings. Rob assured me that the trailer was all but "hermetically" sealed :-) and dust and water would not be a problem. We also met a family of 4 (may have been 5 actually) who had been on the road for some time. They were towing a Heaslip with their Pajero. We watched them set the thing up in just a few minutes. They had nothing but praise for the unit. Now having said all that, there are reasons why we chose NOT to get one ! - 1. Most significantly and nothing to do with the quality of the Heaslip, I had a car accident during our planning. This severely affected our budget. 2. Heaslip are in Adelaide, we are in Perth. So we couldn't see it being built and we had to pay freight to get it here. 3. I didn't really like the "Soft Top" for a number of reasons. 4. No matter how you look at it, out kids would end up sleeping on the ground - which meant some sort of extra matresses had to be taken along. Also, I may be overly worried - but in some of the places we are planning on going, crocs and other slithering, crawling things were also "down at the same level !". 4. Whilst the unit as-is is great, there were some things that I wanted to change. My impression was (and I may be wrong) that Rob was not interested in customisation. 5. Whilst the 9 leaf suspension is extremely rugged and could be repaired (for those with this skill) on the road, I was kind of won over eventually by the fully independent suspension on other trailers. I could go on about this stuff for pages. If you want more info from me, please check out our web pages at http://www.users.bigpond.com/rcspatch/ and use the drop down menu to send us an email. Regards, Steve.