Jayco Outback Swan Camper Trailer Review [Hint: It Broke]

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Before embarking on our 18-month road trip around Australia, we spent a lot of time and effort researching the best way to get around that would be cost effective and convenient.

We settled on towing a Jayco Outback Swan camper trailer. The reason for this was because we knew we weren’t staying in Australia and so we knew we could resell it, and also because it looked like it would be easy, fun for our two daughters to sleep in, and it had “outback” in the name so we assumed it would be fine on those washboard roads in the Red Centre.

It was also cheaper than a campervan, and came with power so we didn’t have to worry about looking for powered sites.

Travelling with a camper trailer is ideal for bush camping, but also has some comforts from home.

That being said, it did come with some pitfalls, and the reality wasn’t quite what we expected. So we decided to write this honest review of our Jayco Outback Swan camper trailer so you can see what it’s really like to travel with this camping trailer.

About the Jayco Outback Swan Camper Trailer

The Jayco Swan Outback is a pop top camping trailer that makes camping easy. You simply stop where you want to camp, pop up the top, and you have a mobile home with a canvas roof.

The Outback Swan is the largest camper trailer in the Jayco Range, and comes with a huge interior living space, two bedroom areas on each end, and can sleep up to six people. There’s also awnings so you can take the indoors outside.

It has a full kitchen area which is also a dinette dining area, plush innerspring mattresses, and comes with robust aluminium-framed furniture.

Specifications

• Outdoor external shower
• Four-burner stove
• 9 kg gas bottle
• Lithium batteries
• 95L fridge with freezer
• Water tanks
• Air-conditioning and heating
• Microwave
• Solar power so you always have hot water
• Curtains
• Standard Suspension – axle & leaf springs shock absorbers
• hot dipped galvanised endurance’ chassis
• Dimensions when extended: 375 cm length x 208.5cm height
• Dimensions when travelling: 544 cm length x 201 cm height
• Increased ground clearance
• Tare weight: 1360 kg
• Towball weight: 134 kg
• Roof rack

Our Experience With The Jayco Outback Swan Camper Trailer

We set off on our road trip around Australia with the idea of tent camping and staying in cabins, apartments, and hostels when we needed a break.

One night, after sitting in our car to get a working light, while the kids slept in the tent, we looked at each other and exclaimed, “there has to be a better way.”

We decided to purchase a mobile home.

We did plan on having a camper trailer from the beginning of our Australia road trip, but some factors outside of our control meant we took off with just our Yakima Skybox, which has been fine, up until now.

We were on the Bellarine Peninsula in Victoria getting ready to do our 2 week drive along the Great Ocean Road and after finally getting our finances approved, we decided to buy a Jayco Outback Swan camper trailer.

It was within budget and we knew Jayco caravans and camper trailers held their value well for resale, which was important to us as we wouldn’t be keeping it forever!

We found a slightly reduced price on a brand new 2013 model at Prestige Jayco in Geelong and purchased her with bank financing.

What we loved about the Jayco Outback Swan

There were plenty of things we liked about the Jayco Outback Swan, it was our first mobile home on wheels so it was exciting.

It was light and easy to tow, and I loved how the canvas roof and walls made it feel like we were sitting in nature and we felt more connected to the outside world. Less space inside meant we spent more time outside.

We also really liked…

No more packing and unpacking

How many f-bombs can you say in one sentence? This is what it’s like packing and unpacking every few days when you don’t have a camper trailer.

In and out of hostels, apartments and campsites was driving us all insane. It was taking at least 2 hours for each pack/unpack. That’s four hours of our day each time we move. For time-pressed people this is insane.

When you have a camper trailer, you pop up the roof and pull out the beds and you’re done. No packing our unpacking needed as it’s all set up inside already.

Plus, when you travel with two young kids the extra storage space is going to be awesome. Our camper trailer also comes with an attached annex so extra living and playing room for the kids, especially on wet days!

Less planning time

Again, the time we were taking to research for our next accommodation stay, to find the deal and book ahead was hours every week.

We got so exhausted with it that we literally would leave it to the last minute and let the angels take care of it for us. (They haven’t let us down yet)

With our camper trailer, we don’t have to plan too much. We’ll just pick a caravan park we like, a free camping ground, or a beach car park and pull up.

A camper trailer is cheaper

Sure, you have your initial outlay, which is expensive. But, if you buy the right brand and model they have great resale value, so at the end of your trip, should you wish, you can sell it and recoup most of your costs.

We’re also purchasing solar panels, so free camping won’t be a problem. Should we head to the caravan parks for more of a village atmosphere, we’ll book a non-powered site and pay around $35.

As we’ll have better storage and cooking facilities, we will save with self-catering instead of spending a ton on eating out as well!

More stability

This is more for the girls, although as a digital nomad, I prefer a little more stability. Our girls are pretty adaptable, but they are also still young so love the idea of having a more permanent home.

Trying to get the girls to sleep of an evening has been a nightmare because they move from tent to bunk beds to single beds, to air beds. New environment, new things to discover all the time.

The bed time routine always gets easier the longer we stay in an area, so we’re sure once the excitement of having our camper trailer is over, the night time horrors should move to bliss.

I will miss the cuteness of Savannah asking, “Is this my house, Mummy?” with each new place we go. Even if it is a museum room showcasing how people lived 100 years ago.

And the girls are really excited about getting their own princess doona cover with matching pillows.

Better organization

We just don’t have the space to be organized properly. I’m so tired of my kitchen being in different plastic tubs. We’ve been camping a lot, but we’re not set up for long-term camping.

The girls have a pile of lonely one shoe hanging around, because their partners are buried somewhere in the car, and cause we change places so often, I don’t have the strength to go looking for them.

I can’t stop thinking about my drawers and cupboards that are neatly organized. When I want to put some cayenne pepper in my morning tonic, I don’t have to dig around for 15 minutes trying to find it.

More storage

We have 2 children, one being home-schooled, and an online business. We need a lot of stuff.

There’s only so much we can fit in our car and at the moment we are packed in and claustrophobic. I don’t want to travel any more with only a backpack of possessions. I want a little more like a hammock, comfy camp chairs, a BBQ, bikes and work desks. No more slumming it.

Camper trailers allow for a little more home comforts. We’ve still got at least a year around Australia, and we’re going into the big wide expanses, we want this to be a calmer, more relaxing experience.

Greater routine = better health and wellness

Managing any kind of routine when you are constantly changing is extremely difficult. We have far too many things to manage to not have some sort of routine.

I’m dying to start my morning in the same way each day: early rise, meditation + yoga, a bit of blogging, healthy breakfast, a bit of school work, and then exploration for the day.

It’s been difficult to maintain any sort of healthy eating and exercise plan which is really affecting our health, energy levels and moods.

I’ve been planning for a week of healthy meals, and then we’ll stay at a place that has no oven, or refrigerator, and there goes my healthy cakes, or we move so quickly that I couldn’t be bothered taking out that tub with all my healthy ingredients so we go for fast food.

Craig and I are not happy with the spare tyres we’re starting to drag around with us. Seriously.

As soon as we get the camper trailer, it is a 3 week cleanse and cleaner living.

(Yep – our high speed blender fit into our camper trailer lifestyle well!)

Better for homeschooling and work

Homeschooling Kalyra is challenging enough as it is. Not having a set routine or learning space for her makes it so much harder.

Now all her materials and resources will be in the one place and we’ll set up a lovely learning area for her. We’ll also have an area set up for Savannah to do at the same time.

It was also better for us with our online business to have everything we need organized in one place and create a lovely office space – decent chairs and tables and some sacred crystals surrounding me for extra thinking juice.

Now to just speed up time so we can get started. You’ll be hearing our squeals of joy and tears of relief when we drive out of Geelong, in our new home.

We were stocking it up with goodies from Costco and starting the adventure in the proper way.

What we disliked about the Jayco Outback Swan

The Jayco loved rattling and shaking out the screws and things that held it together. We purchased the Jayco Outback Swan model, because of course, we were travelling around Australia, there’s a lot of Outback roads!

Guess what?

When you read the fine print, you can’t take the Outback version down the Outback roads. It’s not built for off-roads, even though it’s pitched as being that.

Nope, take it down those roads and it falls apart.

The only thing Outback about it is that it’s jacked higher up for clearance and the wheels are pretty robust.

Since our car was not 4WD, we didn’t even take the Jayco Swan down any tough driving roads, just the odd corrugated dirt tracks.

Yet, without a doubt, every time we did and opened her up to set her up for the night, cupboards needed fixing.

She did rattle apart a lot.

In the year that we had her, we had her fixed by a technician 5 times.

It was tough to get her fixed in Darwin as there was one registered Jayco technician and he was run off his feet!

Here’s what was wrong with ours

The roof cable broke…and I mean a steel cable.

The biggest issue we had was the roof. The cable that winds up the roof snapped whilst we were in the middle of the Northern Territory.

We don’t know how, we were winding her up one day and she snapped.

For three weeks, Craig had to manually lift her roof. It was only one corner, but it still meant that after we wound the roof up as much as we could, Craig had to pick up that corner of the van and hoist it up himself and quickly stick a prop under it.

It was freaking heavy and dangerous!!

Constant problems with the door

From the first day we picked it up, the door wouldn’t lock properly. We had it fixed multiple times on the trip. It’s a flimsy plastic door lock that kept popping out.

And the screws at the top of the door frame were flimsy at best, constantly creating a bigger hole than the screw making them loose.

The roof over the bed broke

We had crazy strong winds whilst staying in Denham, Western Australia.

The flimsy, plastic bit that held the bed pole up that holds the top of the bed canvas snapped and so we could not attach the bed pole to anything so we could hold the canvas roof in place.

No bed for the girls! Craig found a quick solution with duck tape, that we had to do every time we set her up for the next couple of weeks before we could get her fixed.

Don’t leave home without DUCK TAPE!!

The three-way gas system stuffed up.

We had no gas for weeks. So we couldn’t operate our fridge unless we were plugged into the mains and there was no cooking on the stove.

We certainly weren’t happy having to leave Karijini National Park early because we had no way of cooking or keep food cold and no power!

We had to run our portable fridge through the solar battery (as it was an off the grid area) That got sucked up pretty quick and all our food went off and it was 40 degrees in the shade and we were left sitting in the dark!

The bed broke

This is mostly our fault. During pack up, don’t pull out the metal support props of the beds and then have someone jump on the bed as you’ll end up with a buckled bed frame and tracks which makes it extremely difficult to push the bed back in, lol.

I did put on weight during our road trip around Australia. Was it that much to bend a steel frame?

That came at the end of our trip in the Red Centre. What a pain to set-up and pack down became as we struggled each time to push that bed track in and out.

Constant broken doors due to screws falling out and hinges breaking 

She was a rattler alright! We were constantly re-screwing the doors back together.

Final Verdict

Jayco camper trailers are affordable and hold their value. For their price, they work okay, and gave us a home for over 12 months, which we are grateful for!

I feel as if any other make in this price range may have had similar issues. But, I can’t say that for sure.

They’re perfect for short trips throughout the year and taking the family for a two-week beach holiday. You only have to set up and pack up once. You can relax for the rest of the time, and you won’t be doing any lengthy, or hard core driving so less chance of things falling apart.

They make a great home and solution under these conditions.

Someone else might have a completely different opinion, but we can only go on personal experience and circumstances.

If you don’t have the stresses of running a full-time online business and home-schooling kids and don’t have to pack up every 2-3 days and are just travelling, they might be great.

But from our experience, I do not recommend a hard-core lap around Australia in one.

It became common to hear those travelling Australia long-term affectionately calling them Jaycraps or Junkos!

Although it was a good home for us, we won’t be giving up apartments and hostels for good. We still prefer these accommodation types in cities, and for the needed extra space when we start to get on each others’ nerves.

But for the adventurous traveler, it’s certainly a unique experience!

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