Scott Heiman
At any time, weather can change unexpectedly. A steady rain can mean that we stay out longer than expected.
Meanwhile back at camp, everything you left out is wet… So, you’ll soon find if your swag is sufficiently seasoned, whether you fitted the fly on your tent correctly, or whether the tarp you erected as a camp shelter is taut enough not to pool water. Otherwise, you’re in for a damp night.
When this happens to you often enough, you’ll start looking for different hacks and additional gear to keep your kit off the ground; high and dry for all the right reasons regardless of season. But this process can start becoming tedious after a while. What works now may not fit your camping style in a few years’ time, particularly if your family circumstances change.
Darren Houston, who owns Wedgetail Campers, based in Broadmeadow, NSW, is a family man and a hunter. He’s also a fully-qualified electrician. So, having a long, hard think about what he wants when he heads out scrub, Darren decided to make a camper for budget conscious hunters and campers like himself.
Considering his life’s trajectory during the past decade, he wanted to design a camper that could suit the single tradesman and still meet the needs of his fledgling family when he starts to settle down. Importantly, he wanted to make a unit that would allow him to use his ute for work during the week, and for hunting on the weekends without a fuss, and without having to take out a second mortgage for something that can’t adjust to changes in lifestyle.
The Wedgetail Hawk meets this brief in spades – and more besides. As a completely modular slide-on camper built to suit any sized flatbed tray ute, the Hawk can alter progressively as your circumstances change – and will do so at a price point that will knock your socks off. Because, you can pick up a baseline model of the Hawk for just under $10,000.
Sizing it all up
The centrepiece of the Wedgetail Hawk is a bed box that is 1.8m wide, 1.1m long and 1m high. With the flick of a wrist on two locking toggle latches, the wall over the hitch drops down to create a dome tent which converts the space into a 2m x 1.5m bed area – perfect for the 100mm high-density foam queen-sized mattress that comes standard with the Hawk.
You enter the bed box from either side through gull-wing doors, much like those on a James Bond sports car. The doors themselves operate as handy awnings to keep direct light out of the sleeping zone while maintaining a cool breezeway for when you are ‘Back of Bourke’ or in the tropics. The openings are sealed with a midge screen mesh that fastens down with magnets, reducing the inevitable wear and tear caused by zips and clasps.
