Resources / Edition 1 · 2026
The Camp Set-Up Guide
Arrive, set up, and be sitting down with a cold drink before anyone else has found their pegs.
We are lazy campers, and we recommend it. Not lazy about the important things, lazy about the forty minutes of faffing that stands between arriving somewhere beautiful and actually enjoying it. The fix is not expensive gear. It is sequence and habit. The three sections below are the complete text from the guide, nothing held back.
Before you leave the driveway
Most of what goes wrong on a trip was already wrong before it started. Ten minutes in your own driveway, where you have tools, mains power and a phone signal, is worth two hours at a rest stop outside Roma.
The night before
- Fresh water tanks filled to the level you actually need
- Batteries charged and monitor showing what you expect
- Fridge pre-cooled on mains power, and loaded cold
- Gas bottles checked, turned off, and secured
- Toilet cassette or tank emptied and rinsed
- Grey water tank empty
- Heavy items loaded low and over the axles, not in the rear
- Everything that can slide, secured
- Awning arms locked and travel catches engaged
- Route planned, with a realistic arrival time before dark
The two-minute walk-around
Do this every departure, in the same direction, starting at the coupling. Same direction every time is the whole trick, it turns a checklist into a habit you cannot skip halfway through.
- Coupling seated, locked, and pin or lever secured
- Safety chains crossed and shackled, not just hooked
- Breakaway cable connected to the vehicle, not to the safety chain
- Electrical plug in and seated; test lights
- Jockey wheel fully wound up, swung clear and locked
- All corner stabilisers fully retracted
- Wheel nuts checked with a wrench, not a glance
- Tyre pressures set for the road ahead, van and vehicle
- Step retracted, doors and hatches latched, windows shut
- TV aerial and satellite down; solar and roof items secure
- Nothing left on the ground behind or beside the van
- Mirrors adjusted for the van’s width
Retracted stabilisers and a wound-up jockey wheel. Both are easy to forget because they are low and behind you, and both do expensive damage the moment you move. If you take one habit from this guide, make it the walk-around in a fixed direction.
On the road
Tyre pressures
Pressures are the single biggest thing you control between the bitumen and the dirt, and the most commonly ignored. Running highway pressures on corrugations hammers the van, the contents and your fillings; running dirt pressures at highway speed builds heat and destroys tyres.
- Bitumen: the manufacturer’s placard figure, checked cold.
- Formed gravel and dirt: commonly 15 to 20% below highway pressure. The van rides noticeably better and so does everything inside it.
- Sustained corrugations: lower again, with speed reduced to match. Heat is the limit, stop and feel the tyres.
- Sand: substantially lower, with a very low speed and a compressor to reinflate before you return to a hard surface.
Exact figures depend on your tyre, load and van, so establish yours with the manufacturer rather than borrowing someone else’s from a forum. Then write them down so you are not guessing at a gate at dusk.
At every fuel stop
- Walk a full lap of the rig
- Hand on each wheel hub, unusual heat means a brake or bearing problem
- Look at the tyres, including the inner tandem tyre people forget
- Check coupling, chains and breakaway cable
- Look underneath for anything hanging, dragging or dripping
- Check the fridge is still running and holding temperature
- Confirm nothing has shaken loose on the roof or A-frame
After the first hour of dirt
Stop and check inside as well as out. Corrugations loosen things in a specific order: first the items you did not secure, then drawer catches, then fasteners. Finding a cupboard latch working itself open after an hour is useful information. Finding it after six hours, with the contents on the floor, is less so.
Levelling and stabilising
This is the step everything else depends on. A van that is out of level cooks unevenly, drains badly, sleeps poorly and, with some absorption fridges, will not run properly at all.
The order
Side to side first, then front to back. This order is not interchangeable and doing it backwards is why people end up levelling three times.
- 1. Side to side, while still hitched. Ramps or blocks under the low-side wheel, or air suspension if fitted. Tandem axles need both wheels supported, one ramp under a tandem lifts one wheel and loads the other.
- 2. Chock the wheels. Both directions, before you unhitch. Not optional on any slope, however gentle.
- 3. Unhitch and level front to back with the jockey wheel. Check with a level inside the van rather than the small bubble on the A-frame.
- 4. Wind down the stabilisers last. All four, evenly, until they are firm, not until they lift the van.
This is the most common preventable damage we see in the workshop. Corner steadies are designed to stop the van rocking, not to carry its weight or to level it. Winding them down hard enough to lift a corner bends the leg, twists the chassis mount and, on some builds, racks the body enough that doors and windows stop closing properly. Firm contact is the whole job. If the van still rocks, use pads under the feet on soft ground rather than more force.
Soft and uneven ground
- Use a broad pad under every stabiliser foot on sand, gravel or soft soil. A stabiliser that sinks overnight leaves you unlevel by morning.
- On genuinely soft ground, put a pad under the jockey wheel too.
- On a slope, always chock before unhitching. Always.
- If you cannot get level within the range of your ramps and jockey wheel, move. It is not worth four days of a sloping bed.
If you are still shopping
This section is a specification test. Ask to level and stabilise a van yourself on the lot, and time it. Electric or automatic levelling turns a ten-minute job into a button press, which sounds indulgent until you have done it three hundred times. Whether that is worth the money and the added complexity is a genuine question, but answer it deliberately rather than by accident.
Disclaimer. General guidance only, prepared to help you build good habits. Always follow the manufacturer’s instructions for your specific van and its appliances, and comply with the road rules and site regulations that apply where you are travelling.
What the complete guide adds
The complete guide.
The three sections above are free and complete. The rest of the book covers the parts you want in your hand at 4pm in the rain.
Choosing your site
Walking it before you drive it, which way to point, and the unhitching rule.
Power, water and waste
The same order every time, and why grey water containment is now enforced in more places than people realise.
Outdoor living
Awnings, the most damaged item on any van, and almost all of it preventable.
Weather and wind
Wind is what damages campers. What to do the evening before, not at 2am.
Pack-down
A 16-point reverse sequence that makes the costly omissions impossible.
Extended and remote stays
Resource budgeting past day four, when water and waste run out well before power does.
The Trip Log
Fillable. Your rig’s numbers, your tyre pressures, emergency contacts, route and a sixteen-night log. It lives in the van and gets reused every trip.
We do not offer refunds for change of mind. If a file will not open, pages are missing, or you were charged twice, tell us and we will replace it or refund you. Those rights come from the Australian Consumer Law and nothing here limits them. Full terms.
Written by a dealer who services what they sell. No brand rankings, no sponsored placements, and a section arguing that some readers should not buy an off-road van at all.
