After much anticipation, Gandalf the camper has returned from the caravan doctor. In early October, Michael was putting it up in the driveway to show the kids but he wound the roof up too far and snapped one of the cables, causing a corner of the roof to collapse. Annoying but not a disaster...or so we thought. When Michael called Goldstream (the camper manufacturer) the next day, the earliest they could book it in for repairs was 6th December and they would need it for a week - meaning we wouldn't have it back until about 2 days before our departure date! Not the news we wanted to hear and problematic for a few reasons;
The most obvious being we'd have very little preparation time. Further modifications were still required and we needed time to work out how to pack everything in it!
The second reason was that we'd planned a camping trip with friends for the Melbourne Cup long weekend. This trip was to be our 'trial run' to test how effectively we could camp with our 'off grid' equipment including the solar panels, water tanks and fire pit with spit roaster.
But - needing to be optimistic, we focussed on the valuable lessons it taught us:
Buy a tent so we've got alternative accommodation should something else go wrong with the camper on our travels! (we had already tossed around the idea of a tent for the trip in case we wanted to leave the camper behind to tackle some of the more remote tracks but decided it would be too squishy in the car with the kids, dogs, fridge, food, water, etc. Turns out we now have the option if we want to travel sans trailer!)
Better to make these rookie mistakes in our driveway than half way across the Nullarbor!
So we waited patiently as the weeks ticked by but we were both quietly anxious about the timing of the repairs. What if they couldn't get parts? What if it turned out to be a bigger job? By mid November, we decided to try an alternative repairer. It was hard to hide our excitmement when he said to bring it in the next day. What a RELIEF!
So today was the triumphant return of Gandalf. The roof is working again, the breaks and bearings have been replaced, the broken skylight has been replaced, it has a new hitchmaster hitch and all the other little bits and pieces that needed attention are 'good as new'. This really is the definition of "happy campers"!! ...especially when the repairer told us that if Michael had broken one of the back struts, the camper would have been a write off.