After retiring in 2005 from working in the education and training sectors we got to work on building a home on our 34 acre property in lovely Clydesdale deep in the gold fields country of central Victoria, Australia. After completing our passive solar house Rob got restless and needed a new project.
"Why not build a new lightweight camper on our old 1996 Land rover Defender that will fit in a shipping container and drive around the world." he said.....OK!!!!!!....

After that decision was made the research started for lightweight composite panels and a design for the camper. We settled on 25mm balsa and fiberglass composite for the side walls and 18mm for the roof and front and back walls and the polyester and fiberglass composite floor is 12mm thick. A 15mm foam cored fiberglass composite is used for the inside cabinetry. The material is incredibly tedious to work with and took months longer than we planned. Every surface had to be filled and sanded and exposed edges were stabilized by routing and filling with resin. But the end result is a very light and strong camper.

In the end the design was loosely based on a previous slide on camper that I had built for the same vehicle. The main differences being that this time the camper is permanently mounted to the vehicle chassis, and the side entry door incorporates a lower step height with the use of an electric step. On the previous camper steps were needed to enter the camper and this proved to be a real pain.

The photos give an indication of the build process up to the present.