In the back of Jack

I thought life was pretty simple when I first started camping in Australia. I bought a fridge, a battery to plug it into, and a big plastic box to hold all the kitchenware/cookware things I would probably need.

My car at the time was a gorgeous Jeep Compass who I named Tibby, short for Tabitha, after a tree fell on her in Brisbane and broke her. (How I came up with her name is a whole other story).

Anyway, it was a little frustrating digging through a box, which grew into two boxes, to find what I was looking for, setting up a table or two, but it worked for then.

Fast forward to Perth and swapping Tibby out for Jack (so much more room!) and I’ve learned so much more about camping organisation and efficiency for the back.

Adding solar panels to my camping equipment meant a bit of a re-think. I started with a pretty wonky but (I thought initially) workable wooden organiser to help separate items and make camp setup much quicker.

A trip out into the Goldfields showed me that while my thinking was pretty good, the execution left a bit to be desired. By the time I got to Coolgardie - just a quick hop up the road from Perth, my stable organiser was looking a bit wonky and had to be shored up with extra supports every couple of days.

With some modifications it kind of worked for a year until I found a better way - a do it yourself way.

Wranglers don’t fit the stock standard rear drawers that are available for most other 4x4’s in Australia, and the only ones I could find were over east and you had to pick them up. Not possible in a newly covid ridden world so I had to come up with another plan.

I found the measurements for a built set of drawers (from over East) for the rear of Jack and coerced my good neighbour (who owns almost every Ryobi tool known to man) to help me build these drawers. The tables turned pretty quick and and I suddenly became the cheap labourer, while my neighbour took over (thankfully) and made sure that this system wouldn’t fall apart like my build did.

The drawers were built in July/August 2020 and are still standing solid today.

At the time we added a removable tabletop for each drawer, giving me some useable space on which to cook (or reheat) and make coffee.

I mostly use this now and don’t bother carrying extra tables anymore. Im not really out there for an amazing camp cooking experience. I usually prep before a trip and just heat and eat, or eat cold food, depending what I’ve made.

Adding to the drawers, I built a simple platform to replace the seats which gives me a nice long space to stretch out in when I want to sleep in the back. Removing the rear seats is a breeze and takes 15-20 minutes. The seats are mostly out now, and only put back in for rare occasions.

I love refining my setup and looking to see what I can improve. This works great for quick trips however…continuous improvement and change are both good, right? 😉