Kroombit Tops Boys Trip - Day 2

Day 2 – 11/3/2017 - “Beautiful Betsy” plane crash site

We weren’t really rushing to get on the road. All that we had planned for today was to visit the “Beautiful Betsy” plane crash site, complete the 4wd loop and then visit the lookout. Nothing beats an early morning smouldering campfire in the crisp clean air topped off with the smell of bacon and eggs cooking!

There were plenty of warnings not to camp under these widow makers!

The Camp

Jeff had a few practice runs with the drone to make sure it was all working ok before we departed for the day.

We loaded up and headed off to the “Beautiful Betsy” plane crash site. The plane crashed in 1945 and laid undiscovered until 1994 when a National Parks Ranger found it. I won’t rehash all the info here but you can read it on the photos of the info signs. Eight people died in the crash. There was an eerie and sombre feeling about the place. I first visited the site in 2008 and it was good to see that the site is still pretty much the same.

From there it was onto the start of the one way 4wd loop. From 2008 I remembered a steep rocky descent into the “The Wall” camp ground. So in preparation of filming the descent Jeff had a practice run with the drone as we were negotiating another descent.

It was lucky that we did film this one as the descent to “The Wall” had been graded and there wasn’t a rock in sight and it was a smooth and easy descent, nothing like I remembered. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a photo from my 2008 trip to compare it with. But I do remember at the time while we were having lunch there a VW Touareg came down too fast as you could quite easily hear the traction control and hill descent function working overtime on the breaking system.

The "Descent" to the Wall not looking anywhere near as bad as I remembered it from 2008

"The Wall" Campground

The next planned stop was a lookout.  In 2008, the only way we knew there might have been something interesting to see beside the track was due to a plastic bottle hanging from a tree beside the track. I was thinking it was going to be hard to find this spot again because the bottle was probably long gone. But not this time, the whole lookout area had been significantly thinned out. We weren’t sure whether it was due to storms or not but it looked like some big trees had come down which had taken a lot of others out as well.

Getting ready for take off!

After more drone envy time, we packed up and headed off to complete the 4wd loop and head to the final lookout that also had a day use area. Because of the big bacon and egg breakfast none of us were overly hungry so we decided to have lunch at the day use area after some more drone action. There is way too much footage to post up so here is just a sample

And one from a non-flying camera.

After packing up the drones and having lunch it was early afternoon. Not enough time to do the 13km escarpment bushwalk so we headed back to camp. We spent the rest of the afternoon discussing how those of us who didn’t have a drone could justify the purchase of one to our better halves over a few cold beers along with getting the fire ready for the night.

Later that night Dwayne tried his hand at making his “magnificent” damper. He had been talking it up so it had a lot to live up too. It was also the first time that he had tried to cook it in a camp oven on the fire. Well it certainly did live up to its reputation. So much so we made him cook another one just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke the first one turned out perfectly.