A clever hanging solution for keeping your camp kitchen in order

My first 4WD was a D22 Navara dual cab ute. It was a pretty basic setup in the tray by today’s standards—a tonneau cover, a toolbox, and a fridge. Packing for camping trips usually involved throwing multiple boxes into the back for some resemblance of organised storage, one of which was full of cooking gear, and then pilfering through this come mealtime to find cutlery, plates, bowls, etc.

When I upgraded to a GU patrol wagon in 2014 and installed a full drawer system in the back, I was pretty certain I had the ultimate camp kitchen storage setup. The sliding cutlery insert and ample storage for plates, bowls, cups and cooking utensils kept everything organised and made camp cooking a breeze, especially once I added a drop-down table off the inner rear barn door a few years later.

Fast-forward 11 years and after selling the GU and moving to another dual cab setup in my new MV Triton, I was back to the drawing board for camp kitchen ideas, as I wanted to keep weight to a minimum in the Triton build to try and stay within GVM limits when fully loaded for big trips. I also didn’t want to lose the versatility of having a tray by installing drawers. So began my search for a solution…

I was recently drawn to a product that I saw featured on my Facebook newsfeed by an Australian company called Overedger Outdoors. It was a hanging camp kitchen—but not just your standard variant. The level of thought that had gone into the design was instantly noticeable, and the construction looked solid. The hundreds of five-star reviews gave me further confidence that this may be the camp kitchen solution I was looking for, so I reached out to the company for more information on the product.

Overedger Outdoors is a Queensland-based company founded and run by Bevan Hall. They specialise in camp organisation products, with their flagship items being the Overedger packs, available in two sizes—the full pack and the more compact half pack. In addition to these, though, they also make a number of other organiser solutions for fridges and anywhere else in your camping setup where you can mount a Velcro strip.

Bevan grew up in North Queensland, where camping was a regular feature in his upbringing since he was a baby. Like many others, his parents would pack all their camping gear into various boxes to resemble some form of organisation and then dig through these to find gear while on a trip. Although this approach got the job done, his mother, Anne, quickly grew tired of constantly searching for cooking utensils come mealtime and vowed to come up with a better solution—enter the first iteration of the Overedger full pack.

Armed with her trusty Bernina sewing machine, she sewed together a hanging organiser with custom-sized pockets to fit all the camping gear that was needed within arm’s reach while preparing meals. She would then load this up with gear from the storage boxes at the start of a trip and pack it down at the end. While it was certainly a step up from sifting through boxes each day, Anne decided to take the design to another level by removing the need to pack and unpack the organiser. It was at this point that the real innovation occurred, and she came up with the idea of sewing hard plates into the design so that it could be folded into a box when packed up, while leaving everything in place.

Bevan’s family then camped using this setup for 5-10 years, while constantly fielding questions from other campers on where they ‘bought’ the product from. It was only after this constant interest that he decided to take steps to patent the design and optimise the product for market through various prototypes, finalising the design in late 2019.

For the Triton build, I opted to go with the full pack, as I wanted the ability to store as much gear as possible. The pack arrived several days after placing my order, and from the moment I began unboxing it, the quality was instantly evident. Heavy-duty vinyl is used to encase hard plastic inserts that form the walls of the pack, and the whole unit is held in place using heavy-duty Velcro. Handles and eyelets all appear over-engineered, and the unit comes supplied with two aluminium poles that slot into elastic sleeves on the sides of the pack to either hold the wings open when set up in hanging form or hold the lid open when set up on a table (more on this later).

The pack arrived weighing 4.8kg, and after adding all of my cooking gear, it came in at 11 kg—a huge weight saving on a single-drawer setup; Overedger claim you can safely add 11kg to the pack. The first trip I used the product on was a Hipcamp out near the Stirling Ranges, where I hung the product off my 270-degree Alucab Shadow Awning. The pack unfolded easily, taking me around 45 seconds to set up, and the functionality was quickly evident once I had worked out exactly what I needed to house in it for preparing meals, etc. There are pockets for practically everything, and it also features shock cord loops to hang tea towels from and a paper towel roll holder—I soon forget about how ‘convenient’ my last drawer setup was!

The only negative I found was that the unit had a tendency to pivot off the single hanging eyelet, but Bevan said this has already been noted and a double eyelet design is in the works for future versions—he also pointed out that you can hang the bag from the dual straps used to secure the pack closed to work around this as well. Another plus I noticed was that the mesh used to make the pockets meant that sand, etc., does not accumulate in the bag, something I was constantly fighting in my previous drawer setup. It would also allow for easy drainage if anything wet was put away in the organiser (or if you wanted to give it a hose down after a trip). Packdown of the product was super quick, again taking around 45 seconds each time once I had it sorted.

However, one thing to note is that at a potential combined weight of ~16kg, the full pack can only really be hung off solid awnings (and even then it should be hung near the hinge points) or off the vehicle itself. To get around this potential limitation, though, the pack can also be set up on a table while still retaining functionality. In this form, the aluminium poles are used to hold the lid open, and the front of the box hangs over the edge of the table. You can then access the pockets in the base for the plates and bowls by unbuckling a single central press stud.

Overall, I’m incredibly impressed with the build and design of the Overedger full pack. It’s been the perfect addition to the new Triton build and is surprisingly more functional than my previous drawer setup. The fact that the product comes with a five-year warranty further instills me with confidence that it’s going to last, and speaking with Bevan, he mentioned that they have only had 1-2 warranty claims in the past five years, both of which were extremely minor and quickly resolved. So, if you are in the market for a new camp kitchen organiser or are simply trying to refine your current setup, I highly recommend taking a look at the Overedger full pack—it really has changed the way I camp for the better!

By Matt Payne