The ACT Government has announced a considerable amount of funding for mountain bike infrastructure in the nation’s capital. This will see millions of dollars flowing into improvements to the riding around Canberra.
“It’s part of the broader vision which is to kind of reassert, or feebly late-to-the-party mention that Canberra is a (mountain biking) mecca, when all the other meccas are popping up,” says Alan Vogt, from Kowalski Brothers Trailworks. This volunteer outfit has been advocating for trails and building trails in the ACT since the 1990s.
This announcement will see nearly $3-million in the coffers for Stromlo Forest Park, a new trail connecting Stromlo to Cotter Pines, and a new Master Plan put together by World Trail.
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How did we get here?
Circa 2018, the ACT Government commissioned The Best of Canberra Mountain Bike Experience report.
“They had funding to do a public consultation and a reference group, and also had World Trail involved to do some overarching desktop planning to look at possible alignments,” says Vogt, who was a part of the reference group for that report.
With the goal of establishing Canberra as a riding destination to generate tourism dollars and attract events, the report identified a link between Stromlo and the Cotter Recreation Reserve, the Cotter Recreation Reserve, and Blue Range as the best venues for the potential development of new trails, while using Stromlo as the gateway.
Within that report, the community consultation found clear enthusiasm for a connection between Stromlo and Cotter.
“As with all well-interned reports and mountain biking strategies and cycling strategies, once it gets into print, it sits on a shelf and not a lot else happens for a while. This was also smack bang in the middle of Covid, and that really complicated things,” says Vogt.
As with everything else, every meeting turned into a Zoom call, but World Trail was also unable to ground truth any of their desktop alignments connecting the two networks.
When this was going on, the Kowalski Brothers Trailworks had just begun cutting trails at Cotter Pines. Vogt has lived in Canberra all his life, and tells Flow he had been exploring around the Cotter area since he was a kid, riding bikes, camping and swimming. Clearly, he wasn’t the only one who saw the area’s potential and how it could be integrated into a wider connected trail precinct.
“One of the main desires that emerged through the consultation process was a Stromlo to Cotter link — down and back. And one of the things that I’ve always maintained was if you get them down the hill, what are you going to give them when they get there?” he says.
“So, building trails at Cotter, in the Cotter Recreation Area and up onto Mount McDonald is what is recommended in that document. We have been advocating the merits of that goal whilst at the same time building a new trail network at Cotter Pines in advance and of what we hope will happen at Cotter,” he says.
Also identified in this document is Blue Range. Starting out as hectic pirate gravity trails, these have just recently received the tick of approval from ACT Parks and Conservation.
Meet the new University of Canberra Stromlo Forest Park
This funding announcement from the ACT government lays out a few things. One of which is that the University of Canberra has bought naming rights to the Stromlo Forest Park for a cheeky $1-million AUD.
While the budget announcement seems to combine this and the $1.8-million AUD for the 15km link trail, but these are two totally separate things.
Funding for the Stromlo to Cotter link trail was a 2020 election promise that the ACT Government has taken the first steps to action.
As it stands, there is not even a fire road or a well-known goat track going all the way between Stromlo and Cotter. There are a few concept alignments laid out in The Best of Canberra Mountain Bike Experience report, but Vogt tells us nobody has had the opportunity to ground-truth them as yet, so what these alignments actually hold is yet to be discovered.
“There’s no way to get there currently, so beyond looking wistfully down the hillside from the back edge of Stromlo, from vantage points coming out of Cotter or looking across from Brindabella road going, “That would be awesome.” Not many people have walked that ground,” says Vogt.
While GIS mapping tools can give you a pretty good sense of what the contours of the terrain look like, those tools do not provide the same level of detail into environmental and cultural heritage values — which this project will have to undergo assessments for both.
With that said, the majority of the proposed alignment runs through Stoney Creek Reserve, which is one of the best-understood nature reserves in Canberra, and Vogt doesn’t expect too many sticking points.
“In that area, the ACT Parks and Conservation Service already has has a pretty reasonable idea of what they might come across. So say a potential alignment had to cross a gully in order to get from elevation to drop down into Casuarina Sands. They might already know what’s typically in the low-lying or water catchment areas of that reserve, and have a pre-emptive awareness of what they might come across, and what to do about it,” says Vogt.
He also tells us that ACT Parks has been really proactive when it comes to mountain biking and recently have funded and helped install signage and trail posts for the entire Cotter Pines network, and some staff even offered to come out and blow pine needles off the track.
“It’s really encouraging. I’ve been doing this for a while now, and my earliest recollections of meetings with rangers are, were, “Oi, what are you doing here? Who let you in? We’ve come a long way,” he laughs.
As to when we’ll see this link completed, it’s hard to say. But the fact that the funding is there is a positive step.
Tracks and Trails Master Plan
The final piece in this flurry of mountain biking activity in Canberra is the announcement of the Tracks and Trails Master Plan. The current Master Plan was adopted in 2016, and Stromlo Forest Park has engaged World Trail to put together a roadmap for the next five years of track and trail development across the park.
This is still in the very early stages of the process, and World Trail is currently undertaking the community consultation process, with the Draft Master plan, complete with a concept design anticipated to be ready by Spring 2023.
The public consultation has been up for less than a month, so it’s hard to say what will happen. Canberra Off-Road Cyclists President Matt Battye told the Canberra Times he wanted to see trails on the western side of Mount Stromlo while also maintaining the Park’s accessibility for riders at all levels.
Vogt had a more pointed critique of what he hoped to see with the new concept design.
“My feeling about Stromlo is that it lacks both a density and variety of trails and – as a consequence – a lack of event appeal. There needs to be much more, like almost a doubling of the trail network. They are so heavily utilised these days, they are getting absolutely hammered by every type of bike rider,” he says.
As far as what World Trail comes up with, we’ll have to wait and see. Stay tuned, folks.
