Recently we took a campervan for a quick tour from Brisbane to Sydney, a short trip I know, but I really wanted to take one of these for a ‘run’ to get a feel if it was something myself and partner would like to do for a longer trip.

There’s many campervan hire companies in Australia including Apollo, Britz, Maui, Kea Campers, Bartrak, Wicked Campers, Hippie Campers, Jucy and many more. We chose Apollo simply because they had a deal going at the time and had a van a available out of Brisbane.

They van we chose was a 2 berth campervan called the Euro Tourer, which is I guess you could say a luxury camper due to it having on board shower and toilet. Actually the camper is quite well fitted out featuring hot water, 3 burner gas cooker, fridge, microwave, air conditioner (separate to the vehicle air con), toilet and shower, and a flat screen TV with in built DVD.

Apollo Euro Tourer (Ford Transit)

This particular one was based on a Ford Transit and apparently most of Apollo’s fleet are less than 12 months old, this one only had 50,000km’s on the clock so it was really like new. Once their vans get older they’re put in to the Cheapa Camper fleet.

The fit out into a camper has been well thought through and well built, there’s stowage space behind the driver, small cupboards above the bed, space under the bed and there’s even a small closet with coat hangers to hang up the good gear. On the road everything is nice and tight, nothing moves around or flies out when you go around a corner and there’s not much noise. Over bumpy bitumen there is a rattle from the kitchen sink/fridge area but not too annoying.

Looking inside the Euro Tourer through the rear doors

The van includes everything you need including bedding, towels, linen, pots/pans, cutlery, cups, plates and the like. There’s even a rubbish bin, small broom and dust brush. They also include a small bag of tea, coffee, sugar and UHT milk along with some soap for the shower.

Photo of the kitchenette including fridge, burners, sink and cupboards

There’s plenty of headroom in the van, you comfortably stand in the back while cooking, using the shower and such. There’s a swiveling table in the back and plenty of comfortable seating which by undoing a couple of leavers you remove the table, put in another board, drop the seat pillows in and you’ve a got a large double bed. Or, you can leave it as is, if you like to have two singles.

There’s curtains all round, and also a curtain between the drivers cabin and the back, so there’s plenty of privacy when you need.

The van has a 100 litre fresh water tank and an equal sized waste water tank. Inside the van there’s hoses and everything you need to hook up to the tanks for filling the fresh water and emptying waste water. Toilet waste ends up in sealed ‘cartridge’ which you pull out via a door on the outside of the van.

For sleeping the van was really comfortable, we enjoyed relaxing watching a little TV before we nodded off. No need to worry about running the car battery flat as all the camper features run off a separate battery system. The only downside is that it has to be recharged via plugging in to 240v for which there’s leads in the van. The battery seems quite resilient though as we never needed to recharge on our short trip. It’s also worth noting that the microwave and camper air conditioner only run while plugged into 240v.

Looking through the side door at the shower

As for driving, the Ford Transit has loads of go, it pulls away from a dead stop quickly although you’ll need to shift up to third quickly where the vehicle will really pull away strongly easily keeping up with cars. It’s a six speed gearbox and once cruising along the highway there’s no need to change gears to often as it can easily overtake while in fifth or sixth, even up hills it was only necessary to change back to fourth very rarely. It cruises effortlessly on 100/110.

The van drives like a car, power steering, easy to change gears and use the clutch, vision is good all round and there’s also a reversing camera. Whilst it drives like a car it’s still a big van with a high roof, so supermarket car parks are out and watch out for the roof height.

Overall the Euro Tourer was a joy and we’d love to take it on a longer trip. The only thing we felt it was missing was an inverter to keep the power up to a laptop or the like. I also think it’s a shame the camper battery system doesn’t charge off the vehicle system while driving but maybe there’s a good reason why it doesn’t.

Service from Apollo is good, on pick up at Brisbane there’s a waiting lounge with free water, coffee and tea making facilities and also a couple of computers for Internet and loads of travel guides. It takes about 10 minutes to run through the paperwork and

then they take you out and go over all the features of the van whilst offering plenty of tips for safe traveling. Allow an hour for pick up. Getting to Apollo in Brisbane was easy, we got off the train at Northgate station and it was a ten minute walk down Toombul Rd.

On dropping the vehicle off in Sydney there’s also a waiting lounge while they quickly check over the vehicle and then process the return of the bonds etc. They also help out with any advice on how to get on to your next destination.

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