At last EC28 is ready for delivery

In early July our vehicle was ready for pick up. Since our order the company has moved its manufacturing to Sydney. We packed as much camping gear as we could into containers we could take on the train, and headed off to Sydney, in great excitement. Mark and Susan Fawcett had really put themselves into building our vehicle and it showed in their pride as they presented it to us. Thanks to both of you.

 

We had decided on a dual cab Fuso Canter, 4wd. This was the first camper on a dual cab done by Earthcruiser! The build turned out to be quite a challenge for Mark, but his experience in vehicle building won the day and we have a very nice setup indeed. 

Earthcruiser does a lot of modifications on the base vehicle, including improving the suspension, adding fuel and water tanks, cutting the crawl through, reupholstering the seats, modifying the rear seats to accommodate the crawl through.... And lots more. The camper module is added, along with bull bar, LED light strip, winch, and many more options. 

We have 360 Litres of water storage, 300litres of diesel, and can seat and sleep 7 (including two children). The sleeping arrangements include a roof top tent for visitors. 

The tent is imported by Autohome Australia, from Maggiolina (Italy), and we chose the Columbus model. 

So after lots of instructions on how to manage the various pieces of equipment it was time for us to accept the keys and go! 

Beryl

The maiden voyage.

Our plan was to try out our new Earthcruiser (EC28 - the 28th Earthcruiser made) with visitors, and in the cold. Both extra numbers and cold weather was likely to stress the systems and that is what we wanted.

So we headed off towards Canberra. Our first impressions of the vehicle were the size -much bigger than anything we have driven before, except for the motor homes in NZ. The EC is more compact - especially in width, with the camper only as wide as the vehicle, and in height -with the height easily seen from the cab. This makes estimating clearance from overhead obstacles much easier than in the motor homes. 

The next thing we noticed was all of the attention our vehicle created. We constantly saw people staring and turning to watch us. Drivers strained to see the name of the vehicle. Pedestrians stopped to ask questions. At first this was all very gratifying, but over the next couple of weeks the novelty soon wore off. Every time we returned to the vehicle there would be people standing around it and wanting to know about it! 

Our first night camping was a pleasure as we tried out the equipment and worked out how to camp with our setup. Notice how clean the vehicle looks! 

The young adult members of our family arrived in Canberra the next day, swelling our numbers to 5 adults. Two were to sleep in the roof top tent and one on the folded down back seats, on an inflatable mattress. 

And it was off to the snow! Unfortunately this was a very poor snow season in eastern Australia. Our first night in the alpine area we camped at 3 mile lake west, not far from the Selwyn snow fields. There was no snow but there was a severe frost. Some of us braved the cold and sat around a camp fire, but the others stayed inside with the heater.

The next 10 days were very enjoyable as we settled in to the vehicle and some routines. The boys skied at Perisher in man made snow, and we didn't see snow fall until our last day in the alpine national park. 

However we did enjoy the alpine national park - with it's waterfalls, tree ferns, and majestic s gums. 

The family left us in Melbourne after we all caught up with friends, and after a great holiday. 

Beryl