The first day trip

As fate would have it, I spent a week in Sydney just after taking delivery of the Troopy – and I’ve only been back for a few days. The day after taking delivery of Tristan, Bronwyn and I took a Sunday drive from Armidale to Glen Innes via the scenic route, viz. various dirt roads to the east of the New England Highway.

The purpose of the trip was to familiarise myself with the vehicle, see how it handled on the dirt, put some kilometres on the clock, and generally just have a nice Sunday drive.

I didn’t put any fuel in the vehicle in Armidale but made a detour into Guyra from the Ebor road for diesel for Tristan, and food for us. The vehicle attracted a couple of comments from other Service Station customers and I spent 15 or so minutes talking about Landcruisers.

After heading back out of Guyra on the Ebor road, we turned north to Ward’s Mistake, Kookabookra and Moogs Swamp on the way up to Glen Innes.

I forgot to take my camera on that trip, my mind was elsewhere

After putting not quite 300 km on the clock my overall impression was that the Troopy is a delight on the dirt (more on the suspension upgrade later), comfortable and spacious.

It’s far too early to comment on the fuel economy – that’ll have to wait a few months. The 4.5 litre V8 turbo-diesel is a mighty power plant – I’ve not owned a vehicle previously that can accelerate uphill.