Mountain biking advocates are speaking up in defence of the vision for a major riding park across the Illawarra escarpment, as the realities of negotiating for use of Mt Keira becomes clear.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Wollongong City Council, which had been pushing forward with National Parks and Destination Wollongong on the Illawarra Escarpment Mountain Bike Strategy as a major tourism drawcard, this week released a plan for the summit - excluding bikes.
Instead it elevated Aboriginal heritage as the priority for the area, given the high cultural significance the mountain holds for indigenous communities.
This came as a surprise to Destination Wollongong, which had invested much of its "Press Play" tourism campaign on the city's potential for recreational tourism.
Excluding biking from the summit park doesn't sound the death knell for the escarpment bike tourism plan, but advocates had hoped that the park - where there is water, power, and a cafe available - could have been a hub for an 83km network of trails which extend beyond the council-owned area of 9.4 hectares.
"I've always held a long view it would be great to have a beginners' trail up in that space if possible," Tourism Wollongong general manager Mark Sleigh said.
"It would be nice to have a cup of coffee while the kids went off and had a ride and enjoyed the outdoors.
"[But] the cyclists can still access the base infrastructure at Mt Keira Summit Park via the road. I guess it's business as usual in many respects."
Illawarra Mountain Bike Alliance co-founder Gary Pesavento said his group would continue to work with the council and National Parks to progress the strategy, but he was disappointed.
"Certainly in the past in various stages of planning the summit park was slated as an obvious hub - not necessarily the only hub, but a hub, given there's infrastructure there in the way of toilet facilities, water power, parking," he said.
"The disappointment has mostly come from the fact that the Mountain Bike Alliance and the broader mountain bike community has been engaged with this process for five years now, and we feel like we've ticked all the boxes and done the right things from a planning process perspective.
"We've worked with council, and with Parks, on the broader mountain biking strategy, and specifically on the summit park.
"We've been at the table all this time and feel like we've done the right things.
"I think the overwhelming response from not only the mountain biking community, but also the broader community in Wollongong, has been very much in favour of seeing mountain biking being legalised.
"Across the country people are very much in favour of seeing that established in the Illawarra region."