After attending the Newcastle Caravan, Camping and Holiday Expo a few months back, we were definitely keen to make the two hour trip to check out the Super Caravan and Camping Show Sydney. We had a plan this time; Newcastle we were way in over our heads, but not today, today we had a list and were prepared.
Lists are a great idea, the Caravan and Camping Shows can be extremely overwhelming and it is easy to forget what you wanted to look at. It’s good to be prepared!
Shane and I booked our tickets online and made sure we showed up right on opening time. This meant the process of finding a park and entering the show was quick and easy. Again, something we learnt from our last experience.
We walked in and decided to do a lap of the entire show so we knew what stalls there were, what specials were on and if they had what we needed. The show was so large and there was so much going on that this took a couple of hours on its own.
It was then time to get down to the nitty gritty; what was worth it to buy here. Lunch time was a perfect opportunity to sit down and collect our thoughts. We had picked up so many brochures on our way around. This meant we had plenty of reading material and plenty of options to purchase the items we were after.
One thing I recommend prior to any purchase, is to do a quick search online if you can and check prices of what you are buying. Some things are on a great special and others you can buy online cheaper. For example, our Camec 3kg washing machine was on sale at one of the stalls for $300. While this is a great special, we bought it online with a few other things for $280. It is worth it to shop around and get the best deal, it all adds up.
After going through brochures, and discussing what was worth it, we went back in to make our purchases.
Our first purchase was a 24 volt jump starter. Something we desperately needed as our bus has been out of battery for a few months. A necessity and a good buy. The Toyota Coaster requires a 24 volt jump starter as it has two batteries. The one we purchased also does 12 volt, has a torch and a USB charger.
We then went to buy the bulk of our purchases from Coast to Coast. Coast to Coast is a wholesaler store that had a stall set up to show everyone what they were about. The gentlemen that helped us was amazing! As we were purchasing a few items, he bundled them together and we got a great deal. We purchased a Thetford dual fuel combination oven, stove and grill, a Sphere touch screen range hood, a Suburban gas/electric hot water system, and an outdoor picnic table.
If you want to, have a read of our post here which tells you why we chose the items we did.
One last purchase to make. We headed back upstairs for our battery. After missing out on the sale at the Newcastle show as we were unsure exactly what size battery we needed, today we had a list of appliances to make sure it fit the battery and were ready to chat to the expert. We decided on a 12 Volt 200AH Fusion Lithium Deep Cycle Battery. Check out our battery here (eBay Link).
We walked away with a great sale, a great battery, and free delivery! Only downside was we were a little poorer than when we walked in!
It was such a big day, but we were so excited because we now had so many items ticked off our list.
We have a calendar date set for the Maitland show next, and even though we don’t have much left to buy, in our opinion, the shows are worth it just for the knowledge, ideas and information you can get, and the Sydney Caravan and Camping show was no exception! Any enthusiast would love it (our cat Shorty certainly does!). Til then!
