Sunday, Apr 23, 2006 at 16:07
We just got back from a day trip to Kroombit from
Monto via
farm roads which connected up with the Ubobo-Kroombit road. The 100kms to the
lookout (S24.39523 E 151.04556) on the eastern side of the escarpment took about 2 hours and wasn't particularly rough but during our visit all roads were so dusty that we often had to stop because of zero visbility when we were travelling in convoy. The roads were otherwise pretty good, but deteriorate beyond the
sign that says "No conventional vehicles beyond this point". Steep ascents and descents with lots of rocks, and just before the bomber wreck
parking area (S24.46944 E150.91444) the parks people have installed a timber boardwalk to allow vehicles to get over a nasty ridge. The wreck of the beautiful Betsy (WW2 Liberator that vanished in 1945 and was rediscovered in 1995) is at S24.46445 E 150.91444) and is a few hundred metres from the
carpark. It's a fascinating and rather sad spot. The day of our visit the
carpark was full and we ended up having lunch in a lovely
clearing at the bottom of a
cliff face a few km from the wreck. The last downhill section to the
clearing is rather rough but it's a beautiful spot (S24.46567 E 150.92587). There's also a very steep uphill section on the return track the eastern side of the park. Most of the vehicles up there were Patrols, Cruisers, Prados and Land Rovers. Saw a solitary diesel Jackaroo. There were two softroaders, our Kluger CV (with wonderful Cooper HTs) and a bloke with a manual Forester. In terms of ruggedness, I suspect it's about the limit of what you'd do in a Kluger given clearance limitations. We didn't sustain any underbody damage and the car (which has mechanical AWD and LSD but no traction control) crawled over everything we asked of it without any wheelspin although
suspension noise was a bit loud at times. We initially had seven on board (5 adults and two kids) and transferred two passengers to our rellies' vehicles to lighten the load.
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