Flow Mountain Bike acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Mackay Region, the Yuwi, Widi, Barada Barna and Birriah peoples. We recognise their connection to lands, waters and communities and pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
*This story has been updated on 17 April 2024 with new information
When we spoke to Iain Masters, former Vice President of the MAD (Mackay and District) Mountain Bike Club, he was racing around town preparing for the National XC Cup, which was descending on Rowallan Park that weekend.
“I have a few guys out flagging the course right now, and I’m running around picking up generators, a lighting tower and a digital screen to set up this afternoon, which we’re putting in for our live stream,” he says.
Rowallan Park is in the heart of Mackay, and the XC loops provide the perfect venue for national XC events, but the topography and short loops mean it’s probably not somewhere you’d go for a riding vacation. However, about 45-minutes up the road in Finch Hatton and Eungella, there is something brewing that will put Mackay on the travelling mountain bikers map.
Need to Know
- The first stage of a new mountain bike destination opened in Finch Hatton, about 63km west of Mackay.
- The Finch Hatton MTB Trailhead towns will be Finch Hatton and Eungella
- There is a planned 95km of singletrack covering XC, gravity and airflow, including a 36km hero trail with 1500m of descending
- Stage one in Finch Hatton includes a purpose-built trailhead site, pump track and 14.5 kilometres with 16 airflow trails, varying in degree of difficulty.
- Stage two, will be an 82-kilometre network that spans from Eungella to Finch Hatton and takes in Australia’s longest stretch of subtropical rainforest. Planning and investigation works are underway and will continue until 2025. Construction is forecast to commence in 2026.
“Finch Hatton will be a series of stacked loops that can be used for cross country or gravity enduros, and there will be a couple of purpose-built downhill tracks built to World Cup standard. There will be a full set of sealed access roads right to the top for shuttling, and there will be a jump line in the lower part of the gravity tracks for a Crankworx style jump park, leading down into a big trailhead in the centre of town.”Masters tells Flow.
All up, the Finch Hatton Mountain Bike Park is slated for 95km of singletrack, including the adventure trail in the hills south of Finch Hatton and Eungella. Once complete, the network will be one of the biggest mountain bike destinations in Queensland.
Related:
- Countdown To Crankworx | Riding and Exploring Tropical North Queensland
- Flow Destination Hub | Cairns, QLD
- Flow’s Ride Guide | Up high in Atherton
Pour some sugar on me | From sugar to trails
Mackay and the surrounding region are in the sugar business, producing a third of the sweet stuff sold in Australia.
“Finch Hatton was one of the towns up the valley which grew up around a sugar mill, as did most of the towns dotted all the way up the (Pioneer) Valley,” says Mackay Regional Council Mayor Greg Williamson. “It’s an absolutely glorious valley to drive; it’s lush and green, and there is a good flowing river after the wet season.”
“Finch Hatton is a great example of a regional country town that was based entirely around a single industry structure, and that industry was sugar,” he continues.
In its heyday, the small town, which is believed to be named after Harold Heneage Finch-Hatton, an English aristocrat who lived in the area in the mid-1800s, was also home to the Cattle Creek Sugar Mill. It went into operation in 1906, and the mill produced the sweet stuff until 1990, when it was decommissioned and dismantled.
All that remains of the Cattle Creek Sugar Mill is an administration building constructed by a few mill workers, which Project Manager Adam Pearce tells us will be incorporated into the trailhead.
“It jumped out at us straight away because there was this big slab of land right in the middle of town. Just behind it are these huge undulations, some big white gum trees and this open scrub,” says World Trail Founder Glen Jacobs, whose team has been with this project since the beginning. “Once it’s slashed and cut back, it’s going to look a bit like a golf course, but with five or six airflow trails, with all these funky movements following the gullies and natural rolling hills.”
The open area, which was once cane paddocks, heads towards the foothills where the gradient increases.
“Once you move up past the open spaces, you get into open eucalyptus forest, and in some of the gullies up in the hills, you come across this super dense rainforest vegetation. As you move higher and move towards the edge of the National Park, you’re going through a range of rainforest, eucalypt forests, and there are even some random groves of palm trees,” Pearce says.
“It’s almost like a big European valley,” continues Jacobs. “There is a tonne of little eco-zones as you go; you get views of the Finch Hatton gorge on one side and views of a big lake on the other,” says Jacobs. “There is some really good red volcanic soil, a bit of organic, big rock slabs —not huge like Derby, but still pretty big — and there are some sections of the mountain, north-facing stuff which has a lot of rock and big boulders, waterfalls, creeks, and rivers, it’s just beautiful.”
Adventure trails to a city in the clouds | Ride from Eungella
Situated about 17km up the valley from Finch Hatton, at an elevation of 690m, is Eungella, a small rainforest township built on a cliff’s edge.
“The town is surrounded by the national park, and they actually call it a cloud rainforest; because of the altitude and the way the terrain is organised, it captures a lot of cloud, and you are in a mist for a good portion of the year,” says Pearce. “It was actually a really popular spot for hang gliding when that was big.”
The hero trail will start at the front door of the Eungella Chalet and follows a ridgeline down to Broken River, a town with a population of 22 people. From there, the trail quickly ducks back into Eungella National Park, contouring its way across the range to meet the top of the trails above Finch Hatton.
“Riding down from the land of the clouds in the rain forest towards Finch Hatton, that drop in elevation is going to be amazing. You’ll get peeks of the Whitsundays and the islands and views of the cane fields; it’s going to be a spectacular ride,” Peter Lister, who was previously involved with the MAD MTB Club and former XCC National Champ, tells Flow.
Lister also says it’s the place to go if you’ve never seen a platypus in the wild.
“When I took Glen Jacobs up there, I said, ‘ah we’ll see platypus’ and bang, on cue we spotted one,” he laughs.
Finch Hatton filling a gap in QLD mountain bike destinations
There are plenty of great places to ride in Queensland, but there isn’t quite a Derby or a Mount Buller yet.
“We’ve already got a tourist destination up here in Mackay; there just aren’t very many trails, and it’s not somewhere you would come to ride. There are a few (bike) parks up and down the coast, but they are quite a ways from here,” says Lister.
“You know you go up to Cairns, you’ve got the pump track and the rain forest, and Smithfield and Atherton are pretty cool, but you’re talking about 1,000km from Mackay and 2,000km driving from Brisbane to go to a decent mountain bike destination — and that’s what people are looking for,” Lister says.
There are 11km of trails in Mackay, at Rowallan Park, and some marathon-type fire road/double track rides up in Eungella National Park. The new trails in Finch Hatton will fill the geographic void and satisfy the gravity-hungry locals.
“If you’ve got an enduro bike in town, it doesn’t get used all that much. We have the XC trails; techy, rocky, rooty rainforest, awesome trails for XC riders, and you’ve got the marathon stuff, but you have to travel a long way for that, and you’re up against the four-wheel drives and motorbikes. It’s great for XC, but there’s really not all that much gravity,” Lister says.
Beyond satisfying those gravity-hungry locals who have been hanging out for a DH trail to sink their teeth into, as with all of these trail projects, the end goal is to benefit the community and create economic opportunities. These towns built their economic foundations on industry, but for the Pioneer Valley, that industry moved on in the 90s and 2000s.
“People were moving out of the joint, schools were on the verge of closing, and just about all the shops closed up. So, it’s not really about the trails; the ultimate goal is to keep these towns alive. We want to be able to use mountain biking to attract investment in these places and get things going again. But, having a world-class facility 45-minutes from my front door is definitely a bonus,” Masters says.
According to modelling that World Trail and the Mackay Council conducted, their conservative estimates say the trail network will attract 31,000 or more new domestic visitors and 5,000 international visitors annually. This same modelling shows the trail network will create at least 110 full-time equivalent jobs.
“It’ll definitely be the best facility of its kind in Queensland. Our riding season, which runs from April or May to October, puts us in perfect step for southern winters and the winter market in New Zealand. We’re not really going to be in competition with Maydena or Thredbo or any of those sorts of places because when it’s our on-season, it’s their off-season — so we will complement each other,” says Masters.
That said, even when it is peak season at destinations down south, the lush green valley and moderate temps you find in central Queensland will still be alluring.
New trails, new jobs
The fact that there is already a degree of mountain biking culture in Mackay means the sport is not a totally foreign concept to the local community. While some have their concerns about safety and access to the more remote parts of the network, the town-folk can see the effect the trails will have on their sleepy little village.
“The people who have moved there and established families really want to have a part-time job for their kids, rather than having to drive them back into town to work at McDonald’s. They want an avenue to keep their kids around them, and they can all see the benefit,” says Mayor Williamson. “They can all see the flow-on jobs for casualised positions for kids as they are growing up, and potential for full-time jobs to keep people in the community.”
When we first spoke to Pearce about the trail projects, Eungella and Finch Hatton each had a pub and a general store, and that’s about it. But interest had been growing to set up bike shops, cafes, and some houses are being purchased and renovated to become AirBNBs.
Since then, folks have already set up a shuttle service —Off Camber Mountain Biking. Corry’s Cycles from Mackay has set up a satellite store near the trailhead and in May last year, the local Pioneer Valley Agricultural Show Society lodged an application to build an additional 45 permanent campsites.
The local beta in Finch Hatton
Finch Hatton is about 65km from Mackay, and Eungella is just over 80km.
While the trail towns themselves are quiet in terms of places to eat and stay, all of that will come once the trails get up and running. The trailhead in Finch Hatton will be literally across the street from the Criterion Hotel — which is under new ownership — and has your standard pub meals, in addition to more adventurous options like crocodile and emu.
Up the hill, the place to eat and stay is the Eungella Chalet. Constructed in 1933, it’s a classic Queenslander, and from the deck, you can literally have a beer and a burger above the clouds.
While the options for food in the trail towns are limited, Pearce, Masters, and Mayor Williamson said the Pinnacle Hotel is a must-stop, and the hand-made pies are remarkable. For a post-ride meal, the Mayor suggested a crumbed steak — he tells Flow they are so large the pub had to have special plates made just to serve them.
Mackay is the window to the Whitsundays, and there is plenty of tourist infrastructure and things to do nearby, including the infamous Airlie Beach. There is also no shortage of rainforest walks and swimming holes in Eungella and Finch Hatton Gorge.
Pearce tells us a company called Rainforest Scuba will take you diving in the gorge, where you will see multiple species of eels, Gordian rainbow worms, and a platypus up close if you’re lucky. There is a place called the Sugar Shack for the history buffs, which has a museum and a functional tabletop sized sugar cane mill, where you can make your own sugar cane juice.
The first stage of the Finch Hatton trail network is open now, with 14.5km of singletrack across 16 trails.
While the public has been allowed onto the trails going on two months at the time of writing, the Mackay Regional Council is holding an official opening on Sunday, April 21. There will be food trucks, market stalls, a free BB and more!
We’ll be headed to Finch Hatton later this year, but in the meantime, head over to their very snazzy new website to learn more.
Photos: Eduardo Knoch (@dutzik) / World Trail, Tourism Queensland