Off Road Vehicles

I was thinking same as Peter.
'Truly off road' *for you* needs to be defined in order to provide a useful answer.

I pretty much agree with Peter.

Folk with well suspended small camper trailers & a lightweight well set up tow vehicle are no problem across the Simpson - according to many fellow owners of Tvans. Nevertheless I choose not to try as our tow vehicle doesn't 'qualify' as lightweight, & whilst I am confident it would get us across, I'm not sure I would enjoy it.

But back on topic :) essentially the more 'off road you go, the smaller any 'towed accommodation needs to be. Rough road driving as Peter describes is different & quite manageable if 'driving to conditions' with a well built unit which isn't going to shake itself to pieces. Look for glued & screwed cabinetry rather than stapled for example, & effective under body protection of vulnerable pipes etc. Most important is the suspension. Peter's recommendation of long springs with shock absorbers (on a single axle) is ideal, but I'm not sure how easy it is to find vans with long springs. If you do find one it is likely to be well set up in other ways too. (for rough roads).

If you think that with your experience that you may want to get a bit more adventurous & explore a few of the tighter gnarlier tracks (not necessarily 'hard core) where you need for example to negotiate tight tracks between trees, or cross steep/narrow dips/gullies etc then you would need to be looking at smaller towed accommodation with good ground clearance, like the list of poptops posted by Mark. I would add that in terms of the 'most capable' off road towed accomodation Tvan, Ultimate & Vista Crossover are about as good as you can get. Kimberley Karavans (hard top pop tops) are also up there in terms of capability whilst providing indoor cooking & dining without canvas.

All that said, & based on almost 6 years of towing a Tvan over a lot of rough roads/4wd tracks quite successfully, I would still say that my preference would be not to tow at all. But we do because it enables us to not only get off the beaten track, but to stay off the beaten track for lengthy periods which we love in a way that a solo vehicle (with the exception of truck based campers) does not allow. (Storage space).

When it comes down to it, once build quality is assured, the decision rests on 'comfort & convenience' vs accessibility to where you want to go with many permutations of this compromise leaning one way or the other.

Peter, Cuppa and Mark, a lot of very useful information for me to digest, thank you for your input