MOVING MOUNTAINS
LATE last year, a consortium of interested parties announced plans to develop more than 80km trails just 75km from the heart of Sydney. How is it all going? We sat down with the Illawarra Mountain Bike Alliance for an update on the potential Mt Keira proposal.
A quick bit of background; the proposal was tabled by the alliance, in consultation with the Wollongong City Council, the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), tourism body Destination Wollongong and trail building company Dirt Art, for public consultation in October. Plans for an 82km set of trails that encompassed areas deemed non-sensitive by the NPWS and that stretched along the Illawarra escarpment would, if approved, make it the biggest trail centre in NSW by some margin.
However, there are a few hurdles to overcome yet, not least resistance from some sections of the community, as well as some resistance to the loss of – currently illegal – trails that already exist within the proposed build area.
As you’ll read with our chat with alliance member Gary Pesavento, though, there’s still a bit of water to go under the bridge.
MBA: This is a pretty big proposal for NSW mountain biking, isn’t it?
Yeah absolutely. I think, well it’s huge for the Illawarra region, there’s no question, and it’s long overdue. You can do the maths, it’s pretty quick and easy; we're 75km from the international airport, from a population base of around five million
