Blackhawk Down

The altimeter reads 1745m, and we're at the highest passable sealed road in Australia. It's a point 483m shy of the summit of Mount Kosciuszko (2228m), and one that marks the beginning of our 2400km road trip to Australia's lowest accessible road – eight metres below sea level.

Since 1977 the access road to Mount Kosciuszko via Rawson Pass, which allowed drivers to come within metres of the summit, has been closed to the public. It's now only possible to walk in from the car park at Charlotte Pass to the north-east, or via Thredbo to the south.

Interestingly the 'tallest mountain in Australia' wins its title on a technicality, being the highest peak on the mainland. There are, however, higher mountains on Australian soil, including Dome Argus (4030m), Mount McClintock (3490m) and Mount Menzies (3355m) in the Australian Antarctic Territory, and Mawson Peak (2745m) on Heard Island.

But until Jeep invents an amphibious version of the Blackhawk, our starting point was inexorable. We'd spend the next week descending from here through three states, largely tracing the route of the Murray River. From Morgan we'd leave the river and carve a cross-country path between Lake Torrens and the Flinders Ranges before landing at Marree for the challenging jaunt to the Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre shore.

Day 1: Mount Kosciuszko to Echuca
After an eight-hour stint from motoring HQ in Melbourne, we had a night's kip in Cooma before beginning in earnest from our start point. The sealed road at Perisher Ski Resort is as high as we're allowed to go at this time of year (the road to Charlotte Pass is closed seasonally) – and is a fitting location from where to begin our week-long descent.

We elected to take the newest member of the Blackhawk family first. The mid-size Cherokee Blackhawk Edition arrives with larger 18-inch alloy wheels, a larger 8.4-inch Uconnect touch-screen infotainment system with DAB+ digital radio and black interior theme. It's identified outwardly by gloss-black Jeep badging, roof-rails, side sills and window surrounds, and unique front and rear fascia designs.

It's a fair whack of extra gear for $2000. The 3.2-litre Pentastar V6 petrol-powered model retails for $41,000 plus on-road costs, and like the Longitude variant on which it is based, offers 200kW and 316Nm. The SUV comes with all-wheel drive via Jeep's Active Drive I 4X4 system with Selec-Terrain multi-mode drive selector, though given we'd spend this portion of the trek on-road, the model's off-road abilities are better canvassed here.

The Cherokee Blackhawk cruised the open road with a secure footing. It feels bigger than its dimensions would have you believe and, inside, provides a generous level of passenger and oddment storage. The layout of the dashboard means it's not long before we're familiar with the controls, the UConnect touch-screen quite easy to navigate.

There's an interesting mix of equipment on the Cherokee Blackhawk. The remote start and turn-key ignition seem to conflict, though we did appreciate the automated tailgate, reversing camera and high-quality audio system.

On the downside there's no sat-nav on offer and the cruise control had difficulty managing speed on the steep descents of the Snowy Mountains. The Cherokee did, however, stand up well to the difficult cornering and undulating terrain, the slightly slow reactions of the nine-speed automatic the only real blot on the model's copybook.

After a day of rising and falling through the snow-covered mountains, lush farmlands and irrigated expanses of the Murray River we arrived calm and collected in Echuca. The Cherokee Blackhawk averaged a fuel figure of 9.9L/100km on arrival, giving the model a theoretical cruising range of just over 600km.

Echuca, meaning 'Meeting of the Waters' in Aboriginal, is an historic river port on the Murray, not far from the junction of the Campaspe River. The rural city was Australia's largest river port in the 1870s and a key rail terminus for freight in and out of Victoria and NSW, connected by paddle-steamer to South Australia. The 400-metre red-gum wharf, a relic of the era, is now a popular tourist attraction, as are beautifully restored paddle-steamers like the Emmylou, Canberra and Pride of the Murray.

Motoring enthusiasts might also like to visit the National Holden Motor Museum in Warren Street. The collection includes more than 40 Holden vehicles from 1948 to the present day, including a number of rare prototypes and historic footage.

Interestingly, the altimeter showed a height of 85m at river level, showing we'd descended a total of 1660m since leaving our start point. It goes to show just how flat the land ahead of us would be, and how unburdened the Grand Cherokee Blackhawk's diesel engine would be over the coming days.

In this case the Grand Cherokee Blackhawk shares its underpinnings with the GC Laredo, which retails for $50,500 plus ORCs in petrol form and $56,500 plus ORCs for the diesel. Our weapon of choice for the high-mileage run to Burra and the next vehicle change at Hawker was the diesel-powered variant. It's propelled by a 3.0-litre turbo V6 built by Italian manufacturer VM Motori and makes a decent 184kW and 550Nm.

Compared to the Cherokee Blackhawk, the larger Grand Cherokee Blackhawk scores more a more elaborate catalogue of additional trimming in lieu of added equipment. Items include 20-inch alloys in high-gloss black, heated black Capri leather and perforated suede upholstery, a black appliqué across the lower part of the front fascia, body-coloured seven-slot grille, lower rear fascia, sills and wheel-arch flares, gloss-black fog and tail-light bezels, gunmetal headlight bezels, bright exhaust outlets and black roof lining. There's also the obligatory gloss-black Jeep, Grand Cherokee and 4X4 badging.

Our day's trek north-west took us along the Riverina's swathes of irrigated farmland to Mildura. The former home of the World's Longest Bar and a vibrant agricultural hub, Mildura provided a great place to break for lunch before continuing along the Murray until the Great South Bend turn just prior to Morgan.

Morgan, once the second-busiest river port in South Australia behind Adelaide, and like Echuca an important rail/river exchange, still offers many reminders of its busy past. The main street plays home to a handful of historically important buildings, including the grand Terminus Hotel, while at the river a punt serves to ferry vehicles from one side of the Murray to the other.

At the river, the altimeter read +45m. The Grand Cherokee was loping along with a fuel tally of 8.4L/100km, though with a climb ahead of it we were keen to see the final tally.

The car itself proved a comfortable companion on the open road. The strong engine offers excellent overtaking and, despite its size, the Grand Cherokee Blackhawk felt stable through highway-speed corners.

Unfortunately the model's larger cabin – and generous boot – doesn't quite offer the same level of oddment storage as its smaller sibling. The console bin is rather tight and the door pockets slim. A couple of cupholders and a reasonable glovebox plug some gaps, but we found the Grand Cherokee Blackhawk less flexible overall from a storage point of view.

It's also a little harder to see out of. The narrower DLOs are immediately apparent upon jumping from one to the next, though the reversing camera makes short work of backing-up.

The long stretch from Echuca to Burra also showed a want for a driver's footrest. The area normally occupied by the dead pedal is consumed by a foot-operated park brake in the Blackhawk, meaning you'll need to sit with your foot flat on the floor for many hours on end. The seat position generally feels better than in the Cherokee, however, and the seat heaters were welcome on the three-degree start to our day.

As we arrive in Victorian-era Burra, the change in environment is as keenly noted as the past which influenced it. There's an obvious shift from irrigated farmland to pastoral and mining concerns, the historic tourist town once home to the Australia's largest metals mine and reputed for supplying as much as five per cent of the world's copper.

Hawker, which once served the north-south 'Ghan' railway (before the line was moved west in the mid-1950s) is now a gateway town to the stunning Flinders and the enchanting Wilpena Pound, which rises dramatically from the landscape to the nor-east of the town.

At Hawker we again change vehicles, this time opting for something more rugged still. North of our next stop, Marree, we'll encounter unsealed roads better suited to the off-road-focussed Wrangler – again sampled here in its Blackhawk iteration.

The four-door Wrangler Unlimited Blackhawk looks formidably Darth Vader in its black-on-black form. It's a vehicle I'm quite familiar with following last year's class-win at the Australasian Safari, and is powered by the familiar 3.6-litre Pentastar V6 offering 209kW and 347Nm.

The Blackhawk variant – based on the Wrangler Overland – is a fitting choice for the road north of Marree. There's 221mm of ground clearance, acres of suspension articulation, 40 degrees of approach angle and 37 degrees of departure. It's also got a break-over angle of 17.8 degrees, which should prove enough for the flat roads in these parts.

Suspension is handled by coil-sprung Dana solid beams at each end and power is fed by a five-speed auto and Command-Trac dual-range four-wheel drive set-up with 2.71:1 low-range ratio.

But beyond its hard-working chassis, the Wrangler Blackhawk is more readily identified by its limited-edition add-ons. The dark-theme of the Cherokee and Grand Cherokee is repeated here, this time including high-gloss accents in the seven-slot grille, 18-inch black-painted alloys and tinted glass. The interior scores black leather seats with accent stitching and a leather-wrapped steering wheel in, you guessed it, black!

There's also high-gloss badging, a matt-black bonnet decal, spare wheel cover and heated front seats, as well as piano-black interior garnishes and an uprated Connectivity Group infotainment system comprising Uconnect voice command, sat-nav, Bluetooth and remote USB port (but no reversing camera).

The Wrangler Blackhawk is priced from $45,000 plus ORCs for the short-wheelbase Limited or $49,000 for the long-wheelbase Unlimited.

From Pugilists Lookout just north of Hawker we took the stunning Moralana Scenic Drive (Moralana Gorge Road) across to The Outback Highway (B83), before picking our way north via Parachilna and Leigh Creek to Marree.

Marree sits at the junction of the Oodnadatta Track and Birdsville Track, and just south of Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre. It's a small town of approximately 60 people where men outnumber women by more than three to one. It's an incredibly barren and desolate town that was once divided in the middle apartheid-style. On one side lived European settlers and on the other Aborigines and Afghans, the latter being cameleers employed to freight goods in the era before the railway.

Incidentally, Marree is home to the site of Australia's oldest mosque, built in 1882 and rebuilt in 2003 by Afghan descendants. The Camel Cup is still held here annually, owing to the large number of camels that still frequent the area.

Like Hawker, Marree was once a critically important railway town serving the cattle industry. It was a break-of-gauge town where goods and stock were moved from standard to narrow gauge (or vice-versa), and is now haunted by the remains of an NSU-Class locomotive which sits derelict at what was Herrgott Springs station (the former name of the town).

When full, the lake is ranked as the 18th largest in the world, rivalling Lake Titicaca in Peru with a volume of 893 cubic kilometres.

To put that in perspective, the lake holds an amount of water equivalent to five times that of Sydney Harbour (27 tetralitres). The salt crust left after the water has evaporated is half a metre thick in places, but its consistency is unpredictable and driving on it is illegal.

We enter this vast landscape from Muloorina Station. It's a well maintained private road that crosses quickly through a change in landscape from the gibber-strewn plains we'd observed north of the Flinders Ranges through parched salt plains and finally sand. The dunes announce the shore of the mighty lake and as we descend the final few metres the dry bed of Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre stretches ahead of us to the horizon.

Walking on to the lake's surface it's really quite incredible to notice the horizon visible in every direction. The altimeter reads -008m (eight metres below sea level) as we gaze upon the eerie mirage that sees the ground and sky converge seamlessly 4.7km from where we stand.

The lake stretches on for miles and 20km north of where we stand lies the point where Sir Donald Campbell set his 648.73km/h land speed record in 1964. There's a small plaque to commemorate the feat at the visitor's lookout over the lake, a great vantage from where to truly appreciate the scale of the waterless trough ahead.

'Our' Wrangler Blackhawk had tackled the challenging parts of the track into the lake with ease. The suspension geometry made the climbs up and over the dunes and through gutters and creeks easy, and the engine felt comfortable around 2500rpm, seldom requiring much north of its 4300rpm torque ceiling.

Of course being petrol, the Wrangler Blackhawk's touring range was less than impressive. Jeep claims an average of 11.7L/100km, but with a mix of highway touring and moderate off-road work, we achieved 14.4, equating to a cruising range of just on 590km. A 2.8-litre turbo-diesel engine (147kW/460Nm) is available in the Wrangler Unlimited Sport for $47,000. It offers a combined-cycle average of 8.8L/100km and would be our pick for long-distance touring.

The brickish shape of the Wrangler also means wind noise is quite pronounced inside the cabin and, like the Grand Cherokee, there is no foot rest for those longer highway miles. Dust sealing was also a little sub-par, though realistically most Wrangler buyers will be more interested in its off-road prowess and unlikely to care too much about a little bulldust.

What might raise eyebrows for prospective Wrangler buyers is the performance of the headlights. The seven-inch round lenses look the part in the traditional seven-slot Jeep grille, but despite their adjustment provide little in the way of long-distance vision on long, flat outback roads.

Of course, there are a heap of aftermarket headlight units available and ample space to mount auxiliary spotlights. Out here, and given the amount of wildlife on the road, we'd highly recommend fitting better lighting if you're planning to be outback after dark.

Blackhawk Done
End-to-end we tallied just shy of 2400km across the odometers of our Blackhawk trio. The vehicles presented obvious pros and cons applicable to their intended purpose, but in all performed very well. Given the style and variance of the landscapes encountered on our trip it's pretty conclusive that choosing a Blackhawk model for yourself is largely going to depend on what you plan to do with it.

If you're a younger family or couple wanting to hitch up the van and head off-road occasionally, the compact stature and moderate abilities of the Cherokee Blackhawk are certain to hold appeal. It's a vehicle you could live comfortably with around town and yet still holds its own when it comes to that trip to the bush, sea or snow.

For families with bigger kids requiring more baggage space and greater towing capacity, the Grand Cherokee Blackhawk is a no-brainer. It's still very much an SUV you could live with day-to-day, but has ability on and off the highway that makes it ideal for extended touring. We loved the diesel engine and found the Grand Cherokee's off-road abilities more than adequate for the average buyer.

As for the Wrangler Blackhawk, well the verdict is rather patent. It's a vehicle designed to do a job and if you're the adventurous type who prefers to spend more time off the beaten track than on it, then it's really a standout in its class.

That said, the ponderous steering, relatively high noise, vibration and harshness, and lack of comfort on-road will test your patience. You'd really need to be spending a lot of time away from the bitumen to seriously consider a Wrangler for family use, though we'd wager the novelty factor and apparent street cred – not to mention the ability on offer when you really need it – will appeal to many.

Our trek from Mount Kosciuszko to Lake Eyre showed only a small portion of the unique sights and experiences Australia has to offer. It also demonstrated only a fraction of the capable SUVs available for creating an adventure all your own.

If we have one last piece of advice, it's to choose a vehicle that will best suit the task you want it to and the one you're happy to live with. After this trip, we're pretty sure that – for some – there will be three more to add to the wish list.

2015 Jeep Cherokee Blackhawk pricing and specifications:
Price: $42,000 (plus on-road costs)
Engine: 3.2-litre six-cylinder petrol
Output: 200kW/316Nm
Transmission: Nine-speed automatic
Fuel: 10.0L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 232g/km (ADR Combined)
Safety Rating: Five-star ANCAP

2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee Blackhawk pricing and specifications:
Price: $58,000 (plus on-road costs)
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo-diesel
Output: 184kW/570Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Fuel: 7.5L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 198g/km (ADR Combined)
Safety Rating: Five-star ANCAP

2015 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Blackhawk pricing and specifications:
Price: $49,000 (plus on-road costs)
Engine: 3.6-litre six-cylinder petrol
Output: 209kW/347Nm
Transmission: Five-speed automatic
Fuel: 11.7L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 273g/km (ADR Combined)
Safety Rating: Four-star ANCAP