*This story has been updated on 28 November following the Alpine Shire Council’s vote on taking over the governance of the park.
A little over 12 months ago, we broke the news that Mystic Bike Park in Bright was facing closure, because it was unable to meet key terms of its lease agreement with Hancock Victorian Plantations due to its balance sheet being VERY red.
Prior to COVID, Mystic’s financial model was only designed to accommodate moderate visitation, and the shoestrings holding the balance sheet together were fraying quickly as more people came to Bright every year to ride mountain bikes.
With the 2019 bushfires, then COVID forced the Park to batten down the hatches to keep its head above water, and then the post-lockdown boom meant there simply wasn’t enough in the coffers to keep up with the costs of running a massive bike park.
Related:
“All considered changes required some level of higher investment into the Park and alternative revenue models. The ACP Board ascertained that if visitation rates next summer were to be maintained, the current financial model would be unable to support the operation of the Park in line with the requirements of our management licence,” former Alpine Community Plantation Executive Officer Kirsten Seeto said to Flow at the time.
And so, the decision was made to adopt the membership model. This meant riders would be asked to purchase a membership and digitally sign a waiver to access the trails in the pine plantation above Bright — with single-day, two-week, annual, and family memberships available.
This new membership model set social media on fire. People were making sweeping declarations that it was unfair and that they would never be visiting Bright again — and telling all of their friends to do the same. Others were expressing legitimate concerns that they had been priced out of a riding holiday in Bright, and others still were just happy to see Mystic being able to stay open.
A year later, Mystic is still running. People are visiting Bright, and by all accounts, the trails are in the best shape they’ve been in recent memory. There’s new trails on the agenda, new shuttle infrastructure, an updated trailhead and more in the pipeline.
After a turbulent 12 months, Mystic has navigated the stormy waters and come out the other side in good shape. We caught up with the Bike Park, the Chamber of Commerce, the Club and folks from the local community to see how these massive changes have shaken out.
For the full background on how we got to this stage check out our reporting from last year
- Mystic Park On The Verge | Financial strain and concerns raised by HVP could lead to park closure
- Mystic to adopt pay to play membership model
Back from the dead
The million-dollar question is, of course, whether the new membership model has closed the gap.
“It is sustainable,” says current ACP Executive Officer Jessica Short. “The outgoings that go towards trail maintenance and the costs associated with running the park that were previously putting us into the red, the membership is supporting that and enabling us to move forward.”
“We’re not in the red anymore, but we’re certainly not millionaires either, and it’s very cost-neutral,” she continues.
Short explains that this is the ultimate goal, and there are no ROI targets or shareholders to appease. Any money made goes back into the Park, whether that be trail audits, maintenance, road grading, new trails, etc.
However, the status quo has also changed. The ACP can afford to pay a contractor — Blue Dirt — to run maintenance in the Park five days a week. While previously, the ACP did intermittently have folks on staff to do trail maintenance, it had a lot of trouble finding people to work and with staff retention, and so the maintenance burden, in large part fell upon the club.
“It couldn’t sustain itself as a volunteer-run park,” says Laura Gray, who looks after Communications for the Alpine Cycling Club. “There was always a core group of really passionate people (who would go out and do maintenance), but getting more people involved was really difficult. So now that burden has been taken off the Club, and what we do is optional. We can do trail maintenance, but we’re no longer required to — I think that’s been a positive as well.”
With that, now there is someone with a presence in the Park who is accountable for responding to maintenance requests and clearing downed trees as they appear.
“There are a lot of unsexy jobs that need to happen, whether that be planning or seeking approvals. That takes up time and resources, and that is where the membership funding goes,” says Anne Chiew, the Marketing and Events guru at Mystic.
The membership
When this news hit, the ACP didn’t have the luxury of time to figure out how the new membership arrangement would run, so there were a few teething problems.
A significant driver of those teething problems was educating folks about why the membership was necessary and how it would work.
“A lot of our communications strategy was about transparency, and I think there were a lot of misunderstandings at the beginning. We aren’t like Buller, or Derby, or even Maydena,” says Chiew. “When the membership was announced, and the (private) shuttles were paused, there was anger. People hate change, especially change that requires them to pay money. But as more people understood where we were coming from, they may not like it, but they can respect it.”
In those early days, there was a bit of an information vacuum, and some seized the opportunity to pile-on in the comment section. Others like Rob Max, a Bright local who lives just off of Mystic Lane and rides in the Park just about every day, took it upon himself to educate folks who’d read the headline and commented before they clicked the story.
“The other option was that we would lose literally the whole Park. It’s not on state land. It’s not Parks Victoria land — it’s a private plantation,” says Max. “Paying to ride is a new concept for Mystic, and not everybody was on board with that at the beginning — I certainly wasn’t — but I also understood what we stood to lose.”
He tells Flow that he realised that many of the people making noise probably didn’t understand what was at stake, so his priority became providing that context.
Max also noted one of the major points he aimed to get across is that this isn’t a pay-to-play arrangement like you get with a theme park or a private bike park.
“A lot of us in town have had conversations about this, in that the membership of the Park really goes towards its longevity. All of that money goes back into the Park, and it’s an investment in supporting the Mystic’s future,” he says. “It was one of those nuances that kept coming up. You’re contributing to the ongoing maintenance of the park. What you’re getting for it is really nice trails and potentially new trails. And that was kind of the same conversation I’d have over and over again with different people.”
In fairness, some of those headaches came about probably due to my reporting here on Flow given that ‘pay to play’ featured in a headline — while snappy, it didn’t capture the nuance of this new situation for Mystic — sorry folks.
Once the dust had settled, the membership structure was announced, and it would be hosted on the Hive Pass App. This app was developed in New Zealand and is used to support mountain bike club memberships.
“It was very much trying to shove solution A into solution B. We were the first mountain bike park to be introduced into the system. Flon the owner and developer at Hive Pass has been really great at saying well, this feature was designed for club membership, let’s tinker with it so you can use it for buying a day pass,” says Chiew.
And there have been some hiccups with the rollout. Chiew tells us initially, there was no facility to support advanced purchasing — so if you bought your day pass at 10pm the night before you were planning to ride, it was activated for that day and expired at midnight.
“Poor Jess would wake up with a Google Sheet of refunds to issue, and one of the first features I insisted we develop was advanced day purchase. Since then it’s been really nice,” says Chiew.
When we first spoke to Short and Chiew back in September, the big unknown was if that first wave of people who signed up for the membership when it was announced would renew. This whole operation relies on the members’ continued contribution to allow maintenance to adhere to the lease agreement with HVP.
We followed up with Short in early November.
“We have had a good uptake on membership renewal — we do expect this to rise nearing the summer holidays in December too, as this is when visitors will have signed up,” she told Flow.
Private shuttles aren’t coming back any time soon
One of the things folks were up in arms about with the new membership model was the scrapping of private shuttles. This was also a central sticking point with the lease agreement as there was a safety concern between riders and cars on the narrow road. The grading required to keep the road up to scratch was eating up a significant amount of the annual budget.
“We have seen a reduction in the number of vehicle versus bike incidents or accidents — which is great,” says Short. “We have also increased the number of (Blue Dirt) shuttles up to seven days a week, so there is no accessibility problem. For us as well the roads have been in much better condition, so we’re not having to spend extra money regrading, drainage and earthworks.
We do have a budget to spend on it every year, but since we paused private shuttles, it hasn’t gone over budget like it has in previous years,” she continues.
Put simply, with fewer vehicles driving on the shuttle road, it lasts longer, and money that would have previously been spent on fixing the pot holes can be put into other things — like trails.
On that note, both Short and Chiew were quick to point out that shuttles aren’t required to ride Mystic, and there are climbing trails to get you up the Park — they’ve even created a route on Trailforks that will get you from the trailhead up to the top of Hero trail.
The membership and not having to spend as much on trail maintenance also means one of the trio of new trails Mystic has in the pipeline is a new climbing trail. Trailscapes is in there working on it as we speak, and last we heard, it’s projected to be open by Christmas.
The Park is also getting an actual trailhead, which will be split between Pioneer Park and a new shuttle access road to keep the busses off Mystic Lane.
“The secondary access for the shuttle very much benefits the local neighbourhood because imagine having a minibus with a double trailer going back and forth and back and forth past your house all day, every day — that would be very frustrating,” said Chiew.
“That’s also where all the new trails will come down and meet, so we’ll have this beautiful centralised location for shuttles, a trailhead, potentially some toilets — which would be great because there aren’t any nearby — and an area which people can socialise and gather,” she continues.
Blue Dirt has long run shuttles at Mystic and continues to do so, however the membership model has also allowed them to take over the trail maintenance. Brett Hollis from Blue Dirt tells us when all of this was happening, there were some personnel changes at ACP, and they were invited to tender for the contract to run the trail maintenance program — which they eventually won.
“We basically live in the Park, and we have four crews in the Park, five days a week, 52 weeks a year. On the shuttles, people will tell us, ‘Hey guys, there are some brake holes appearing on this berm on Shred Kelly’s’ we can get in there straight away and get it fixed,” he says.
And Blue Dirt’s presence around the park is noticeable. Downed trees — which are VERY common in a pine plantation — are cleared within a few hours, and they have crews out watering Hero trail during the summer, not only to protect the trail surface but also makes it better to ride.
More recently, Blue Dirt has also brought on bike patrol. Similar to ski patrol, these are first aid-trained riders roaming the Park to respond to incidents and provide help or information if you need it. These are new jobs in Bright, with locals being hired to do them, that have been created as a result of the memberships.
What does the Alpine Cycling Club think?
It’s all well and good for this writer living on the Gold Coast to have opinions about the state of play at Mystic Mountain Bike Park, but ultimately, the folks who live in Bright are the ones who will bear the brunt of any changes to the way it runs. Not just affecting their recreation, but these are the folks running businesses in the area, some of which rely on tourism.
The Alpine Cycling Club has a seat on the ACP board, and according to Gray, who you heard from at the top, its goal in all of this was to ensure Club members got the best possible deal to be able to keep riding at Mystic.
“The land that Mystic exists on is not public land. It is owned or leased, depending on which way you want to go about it, by HVP. And at the end of the day, it’s their land, and they allow us permission to use it. So we really have to respect, you know, whatever contingencies they want to put in place to help them minimise their risk,” says Gray.
And so, with that in mind, the Club’s main goal was to ensure its members retained access and that a membership fee did not price them out of the equation.
Gray acknowledged that there was some angst about the change in policy; however, the locals saw the writing on the wall.
“We have been really lucky to access something like this for free for so long. But with the popularity Mystic has gained over the past years since Hero was first opened and then Shred Kelly, it was never going to last. There were risks having that many people riding in the Park, that many cars on the shuttle road, on essentially private land, it was not sustainable to keep it running that way,” she says.
First and foremost, Gray tells us that the Club is stoked the Park has stayed open, and people are glad they can still ride. But it also negotiated a policy where the ACP would reimburse a portion of the adult membership fees.
“The club also covers Mystic membership fees for all of our club juniors — of which there are about 150,” she says. “We reimburse families for that cost, which means that’s a cost they don’t have to bear.”
However, with the memberships also shifting the maintenance burden away from the Club, it allows it to allocate resources back to other things. The Club has always had a memorandum of understanding with HVP and the ACP that it can build trails in the Park and run maintenance and events. That MOU expired right around the same time the memberships came in but has been updated and slightly redesigned — some of the processes for approvals have changed — but nothing about what the Club can and cannot do has changed.
“All it means now is that there are more people in the Park, looking after the trails, and it has never been in better condition than it is right now. That was very, very clear in that horrific period of rain we had late last year. Parks all over Victoria were closed for weeks and weeks while the cleanup was done — Harcourt is still closed. Mystic was closed for about half a day, and then we reopened,’ says Gray.
As part of that new and improved MOU with ACP, the Club has the keys to grant access for after-hours private shuttling — which is currently the only way to do so.
“We managed to secure a deal for our members through our representative on the ACP Board, if our members perform trail maintenance, they get access to do free, private shuttles after hours. Once they’re inducted, they can shuttle themselves and their friends up and down the hill — which is a pretty good benefit because nobody else is allowed to do that,” she says.
According to the Alpine Cycling Club website, getting your name on the list only takes three hours per month, though you must also be a club member. That’s a pretty stonking good deal.
“There’s obviously a few people that are not happy with the changes, and want Mystic to remain open and free to use forever. The reality is it’s not public land, so that’s not going to happen,” says Gray.
Has the membership had an impact on visitation?
If I had a nickel for every time someone in the comments on the first stories we published when the memberships were announced proudly proclaimed they would never step foot in Bright again — well, I’d be able to buy an annual membership to Mystic and probably a beer at the brewery.
Others expressed legitimate concerns that having to spend over $100 AUD a day for a membership and shuttles priced them and their family out. With the RBA whacking folks with the 13th rate rise since May 2022, this is a real prospect, and it adds up if you’re on the hook for a membership and multiple shuttle passes.
“There was definitely a reluctance from those outside of Alpine Shire. But I think it slowly kind of bled through how good the trails are running because of the increased maintenance, and I think that’s actually brought a lot of people back that initially were not going to visit Bright,” says Short.
“Initially, when people were like, we’re boycotting Bright, we’re going to go to Mount Beauty and Falls Creek and Buller. We love our neighbours at Mount Beauty, Falls Creek and Buller, but we know how strong our product is and how unique it is,” continues Chiew. “They don’t offer what Bright does — a bike park close to a well-serviced tourist town. You can spend half your day rail trailing with the kids and then spend a couple of hours doing laps of Shreds. We love to send people to Falls Creek and Buller and everywhere else — it’s not a competition between other mountain bike parks, we all offer something unique.”
Andrew Geekie, an Executive Member of the Bright Chamber of Commerce and Director of Bright MTB, tells us that business has remained strong in town after the changes.
“We have not seen a large departure of visitors due to the new membership model, forces greater than the Mystic Park membership have played a greater role i.e. fresh snow or no snow,” he said.
He noted that they only have 12 months of data in the bank, so they can’t say hand-on-heart numbers in the Park are up or down. They can only go by what they see in town and on their own balance sheet.
The business community is under no illusions about the role that Mystic plays in the local economy — both in businesses which are related directly to mountain biking and other services and accommodation in town. When the membership model was announced and that it would be running through the app, local outfits got involved.
“Everyone was a bit nervous when it all happened. And many businesses got involved directly with the app to offer discounts for Mystic members — not just to show their support but also as a value add,” he says. “A lot of businesses want to do more in the app, but Hivepass is still fairly limited (with its functionality). We appreciate that it takes time for the business model to mature and to develop the app, but people are overwhelmingly supportive.”
“Mountain biking has given a lot of business in Bright a lot of certainty, which has led to full-time work for a lot of people as opposed to part-time — it’s removed the seasonality,” he says.
Geekie’s own business, Bright MTB, runs tours and lessons in the Park. He says nobody is running around with a big stick saying show us your licence or bugger off. But locals and business owners are having conversations with people about the memberships and the why behind it. He says when he has encountered folks who don’t have a membership, it’s not because they’re trying to skirt having to pay. It’s because they had no idea, and the first thing they do is reach into their pocket and sign up.
Max echoed a similar sentiment.
“Most people have been really good about it and are excited to tell you they bought an annual pass or whatever. There’s always people who don’t know, and they usually are happy to support Mystic once they understand. There will always be people that don’t want to, and if they are out there riding and still don’t want to, that’s a shame, but they are who they are,” he says.
Hollis and Blue Dirt arguably have one of the most direct lines to folks visiting the Park — they are the ones checking the memberships and ferrying you up in the shuttles.
“The feedback we’re getting is nothing but positive. We hear everything, and people will tell our drivers if something is not working,” he says.
What about the folks who are still against the membership?
For this piece, we aimed to tell as complete a story as possible and include voices from folks at every angle. With that, you’ll note the absence of a critical voice — someone unhappy with Mystic’s new direction.
We reached out to folks who were loud on social media —both our channels and Mystic’s —when this news broke, as well as folks our connections in Bright thought may have something to say. To date, none of them have responded to our requests for comment. We can only speculate as to whether that’s because they have changed their tune or simply because they don’t answer phone calls and text messages from unknown numbers or check their Facebook message requests.
Of course, everyone we spoke to had specific things that could be done better — many of which related to the app — which the ACP is well aware of. Overall, everyone expressed they would love for Mystic to be free for everyone. Bright’s roots are in a bike park built by the community. Many of the trails best trails in the Park are those that exist because of a few local’s blood, sweat, and tears. Then being asked to pay for the privilege to use what you had built, I’d be pretty miffed too.
In that sense, Mystic is a victim of its own success, and has grown to be something well beyond a community-built and managed park. And with unique circumstances surrounding its existence in an active pine plantation and the massive number of people who ride there every year, the good old days are just that.
Ultimately an annual membership costs about the same as a 3C Maxxis tyre. So long as the trails stay in good condition, trees get cleared fast, and the bike park continues to offer an experience different to others in the High Country, folks will be able to rationalise paying for a membership.
Update | The Council to vote on how Mystic will operate in the future
But it seems the story doesn’t end here. It seems we’re in for a bit of groundhog day as despite the Park’s success over the past year, it was once again headed for a cliff of uncertainty. Shortly after we first published this feature, the Alpine Shire Council announced it would be holding a vote on Tuesday the 28th November at its monthly Ordinary Meeting to make a key decision on the operating model of the park.
According to the announcement, Alan Rees, Council’s Director Assets, and ACP Board Member, said that due to the ever-increasing number of user groups and events, a more “contemporary” operating model is needed.
“Management of Mystic Park has been volunteer-led, with ACP managing trail maintenance, ongoing operations, licensing, event management and liability,” he said.
“The introduction of the membership model has enabled Mystic Park to remain viable over the last twelve months; however, in addition to financial security, we need to explore additional operating measures to enable a longer-term sustainable solution.”
We asked Short directly if was part of a push to further commercialise or privatise the park.
“Certainly not – this has been identified as the best option for the future of Mystic park,” she said.
Short also said this would not have any effect on existing projects in the park.
What the press release from the ACP glosses over is that the current lease agreement with HVP for Mystic Bike Park expires in December 23, 2023, and the timber company has said it would not hesitate to close the park on expiration. According to the meeting agenda (starting on page 84 for folks playing at home), the Council and ACP explored a number of alternative governance models, including continuing the current model or moving some of the directors into full-time, paid roles — it’s all volunteer-run at the moment.
Reading between the lines, it seems HVP was not on board with any of these proposals, as the document states the only remaining option was for the Council to take over governance and operational management.
“Consideration of a range of options beyond expiration (sic) of the current licence with Alpine Community Plantation Inc. concluded that no other options are feasible to secure the future of the Park. HVP has recognised Alpine Shire Council as the organisation best qualified to fulfil the governance and operational management responsibilities for the recreational use of Mystic Park for the benefit of the Alpine Shire community,” the document reads.
In a statement released by the Alpine Cycling Club, it noted that HVP said it would only negotiate with the Council on the terms of the new lease.
The Council voted on whether to negotiate a sub-licence agreement with HVP to oversee the operations and management of the park, and contract that out to a professional operator through an EOI tender process. Fortunately, Council voted unanimously in favour of taking over the park.
Unfortunately, because Mystic is on land leased to HVP in perpetuity thanks to the Victorian Plantations Corporation Act, the plantation is the defacto land manager. This means they get to make the rules and this is the cards HVP has dealt for Mystic.
Now it’s up to the Council to figure out what happens next.
We’re working to find out more and have sent out requests for comment and will update as we find out more.
Photos: Sam Purdie, Campbell James, Flow MTB