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Having read the site survey report the reason the warrubungles was chosen was the weather - siding spring mountain has a significantly higher number of clear nights per year than Kaputar - which was the second best in the survey.
The key to complex decisions is understanding how the "wants" are weighted and in this case the percentage of clear nights was considered the most important parameter. A mature politically stable country able to preserve a dark-sky site for the long term was the second priority. Seeing was not a high priority.
Being further north and closer to the coast, Kaputar suffers cloud pushed in from tropical lows along the Queensland coast, whereas siding spring does not.
On the other hand the seeing at siding spring is below average because it is downwind of turbulence created by peaks and ridges to the west and south. Even the blue mountains offers better seeing. Kaputar on the other hand can turn on nights of stunning seeing in laminar air, as it has nothing to disturb the airflow.
As one who also frequented Kaputar many times in the 80s and 90s I agree it can be clouded out but when it is good it is very, very good indeed.
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