Not quite 7 years old – Araluen – Dec 2025

This trip was intended as a quiet trip away for two families to celebrate a couple of kids soon to turn seven. With Christmas coming up fast the idea was to have a quick birthday celebration for the boys without all the fuss of two separate birthday parties or a joint event at a local kids play area. The unofficial motto of the weekend was ‘Still better than Flip Out’, and it definitely was.

This trip also marked the first time out camping with our new (to us) VW Amarok as the tow vehicle. We had picked up this white 2018 Amarok V6 a few weeks before this trip while the van was getting some rest up on blocks in the backyard to sort out some transmission issues I’d experienced coming back from Queensland in October. The van will still stay in the family but will be semi-retired to ‘project car’ status for a while. This will let me take on all the big jobs I wanted to do on the van that I’ve not been able to with it still being used as a daily driver.

One thing we hadn’t counted on was that there is much less space in a ute with a roller cover compared to a van. Even our standard camping gear was struggling to get fit in and organised in the new vehicle. With everything sorted as best we could, we set off just after Ollie got back from school on Friday afternoon. The trip down to Braidwood was pretty uneventful. The new ute pulls the trailer easily and the wireless brake controller worked just as well as a wired one.

We arrived at Araluen campground around 5pm, and were all set up and having a drink by 5.30pm. It was quite a hot afternoon, in the low 30s, so we made a quick trip to the creek to cool off. The creek was really low – probably as low as we’ve ever seen. Our friends arrived around 7pm and set up near us. The kids enjoyed some giant Jenga and the adults caught up with some drinks.

Dinner for us was beef fajitas cooked on the BBQ which were fantastic. Even Ollie enjoyed some, despite being an incredibly picky eater. Rosie stole a plastic chair from a campsite she thought was unused, but the owners came back for it and I had to lie to them about how we ended up with it.

We had a fire that night as the weather got a little cooler, but overall we were in bed fairly early.

The next morning the kids were out and about very early, as were other (less considerate) campers. Fortunately I managed to get back to sleep, but Rosie wasn’t as lucky. With a 38 degree day forecast, it got hot early and we all went to the creek around 10am to cool down.

At 11.30 we pulled up stumps and started getting ready to head into Araluen for lunch at the pub. The fact they might have air conditioning on in the pub was a major consideration as well. Lunch was pretty good. The dads taught the kids the finer points of pool. Not everyone ate their lunch though, sadly even some tasty looking lamb cutlets got left uneaten.

After lunch we headed back to the creek for the afternoon. The kids were allowed to bring their Nintendo Switches this time, and they got set up on the side of a riverbank looking at their computer screens (Switch Island). Some gold was panned for, and some small flecks may have even been found, but we suspect it probably wasn’t enough to retire on. That afternoon was wonderfully relaxing. Some of us managed to pull off a snooze in the dappled sunlight while sitting in camp chairs set up in shallow water. Highly recommended as a stress relief system.

Once we headed back to camp Rosie revealed make-your-own Minecraft blocks for individual cakes. The kids were given pre-cut blocks of brownie and a few squeeze bags of coloured icing to recreate Minecraft on a small scale. It was messy, sticky and great fun for the kids. Rosie then appropriated our friends hammock as a reward for organising the cake. That seemed pretty fair to us.

The weather changed significantly that afternoon. The BOM heatwave was cancelled, and replaced with a possible thunderstorm warning instead. The winds picked up a lot and circled around a lot in the Araluen valley so you couldn’t tell what direction a gust of wind was going to come from. A few spatters of rain came as night fell so we moved under our friends caravan awning.

Dinner that night was pizza done on the BBQ. Ollie had some but didn’t like the store-bought bases – he’s spoiled at home when Rosie makes pizza dough from scratch.

That night the kids were exhausted so we sent them to bed relatively early. We sat up talking under the awning. We were visited at around 10.30pm by a juvenile king brown snake that slithered through the campsite and right between the legs of our friend sitting next to his caravan. His reaction during and immediately after was objectively hilarious – you don’t see a lot of guys in their 40s sitting cross legged in their camp chairs constantly scanning the area with a massive spotlight. After that incident, and soon after we had stopped laughing, we all went to bed early, making sure things were tied down and secured from the random gusts of wind.

In the morning we had a bit of a slow start. A small fire was started to cook up some jaffles. We packed away first and headed home to feed our grumpy cat, with our friends following later in the day. Overall it was a fantastically relaxing weekend away. A big thank you to Em and Kris for camping with us, and of course thanks to Rosie for organising all the activities for the kids!

Technical details

The Amarok towed well, as expected. With all that extra torque we were able to overtake and travel uphill much easier than the van could. The Amarok has also got a lot more sound deadening in place so road and wind noise are improved as well. I do miss some of the features of the van, like the roomy interior and centre console fridge, but the Amarok is a nice place to sit in for long periods. Getting a ute was a deliberate choice as we often have household errands and chores that would require borrowing a box trailer or ute. We’ll give the new car at least a year to see how it settles in, tick off a lot of long-term fixes for the Delica that I’ve been putting off for a while now, and do a lot of trips to the tip and Bunnings in the meantime to get full use out of our very own household ute.

Instead of hardwiring a towing brake controller into the Amarok (quoted ~$850), I decided to try a wireless controller that seems fairly new to the market.  I picked up a Bendix Ultimate Tow+ on special for $750. It consists of a small control unit that straps or screws onto the drawbar of the trailer with a piggyback adaptor that sits between the vehicle 7 or 12 port socket and the trailer plug. There is a dedicated control dial powered by USB in the cab that magnetically attaches to any car ‘ring type’ phone holder. They include two types of holders. The trailer brakes are powered by the 7-pin headlight circuit, so you need to always drive with the headlights on for trailer brakes to work. This system worked well; it was at least as granular and usable as the Redarc v3 controller I have installed in the van with the bonus that it can be swapped between different trailers and tow vehicles quickly and easily.

(If anyone from Bendix is reading this I’ve got a few tweaks that could make the next version even better)

The Amarok doesn’t have an Anderson charge port yet, but I have ordered a kit and it should be relatively straightforward to install myself. The camper fridge chewed the battery with the hot weather over the weekend, using more than 120Ah over 2 nights. Our friends fridge was doing the same in their caravan. With the other big battery intending to stay installed in the van I may need to look at how the Amarok gets wired up for camping trips.

The van seems to be running okay now, but there’s definitely some potential issues with the transmission that will need attention next year. Changing the transmission filter and doing a couple of flushes of the fluid improved gear shifting immensely, but there’s still improvements that could make things as good as new especially when cold. Good thing I’ve got a ute and can pick up a new transmission if needed myself now! There’s some tentative plans for the van for 2026, but I won’t mention them just yet.

And finally, we are just a little bit sick of Araluen as our default go-to campsite. We’ve got a Wee Jasper trip coming up and a south coast trip in January, but we’ll also try to explore more new and interesting campsites in 2026. If you have any suggestions within 3-4 hours of Canberra our email is contact@tallblackvan.com or send me a DM on Instagram @tallblackvan.