'Imagine tons of footballs but no football fields’
Children as young as 12-years-old are among those facing council crackdown for building dozens of dirt jumps and illegal bike trails in bushland reserves across southeast Brisbane. The activities have scared off wildlife, destroyed native plants and caused ankle-deep cavities to develop across the conservation zones. So why do bikers still ride in those areas, and will a hard council crackdown actually solve the problem?
-- Transcript --
Dylan Wildman: My favourite thing to do outside is obviously mountain biking. There’s such a joy when you’re riding your bike, and the sun’s setting, and the cool breeze is blowing on your face.
Crispian: Dylan Wildman was twelve when he first became serious about mountain biking.
Dylan: I can ride without training wheels, I can go up this hill, can I go down this?
C: Dylan is now fifteen and has started a mountain biking club at his local high school.
Dylan: Initially it was just because I wanted to do it… looking into it more, I’ve gone yup – there’s a serious need for this. There’s a serious need for mountain biking.
C: While the Brisbane City Council has set aside one bushland reserve at Mt Coot-ha for mountain biking in inner Brisbane, many young mountain bikers – like Akira Garret – aren’t using it. Akira says the trails are too far away.
Akira: I’ve been forced to make stuff to actually ride mountain bikes in Brisbane. And because we don’t have cars, we go to the nearest bushland and create dirt jumps.
C: Unlike sanctioned trails which are designed to have minimal impact on bush, these jumps and bike trails are built for temporary use. Yet the damage they cause is permanent.
Michael: 52 hectares of bush in Seven Hills, which is between Morningside, Norman Park and Camp Hill… basically left as it was pre-settlement.
C: That’s Michael. He’s a cyclist and a member of a bush-care group responsible for Seven Hills Reserve.
M: It’s got some really old growth trees in the park… hundreds, hundreds of years old.
C: Seven Hills has one of the reserves where mountain bikers have built dozens of jumps and bike trails. Others include Belmont, White Hills and Toohey Forest.
M: We’re talking about big kids, y’know, teenagers and young adults. They are coming in with power equipment and they are sawing through trees – they’re killing trees – and in some cases they’re digging up the ground to make jumps, which leaves a cavity, which gets eroded. And of course the bike jump becomes compacted again and is also something very hard to regenerate.
C: The bush-care group showed me one cavity stretching across a bush trail. It was deep enough to fit my ankle and it wasn’t like that months ago.
M: Track goes all the way down to the creek, right? And they’ve cut through here because it’s a shortcut.”
Anonymous bushcare worker: It looked just like that. I’m pointing at bare earth, that’s what it looked like. And it’s right down to where the rock is exposed… You’re gonna find it very difficult to get stuff to grow on that.”
C: It’s discoloured as well. It’s discoloured. You can see, it’s gone yellow.”
Anon: Yeah it’s topsoil. It’s all topsoil- well, there is none. It’s gone.
C: If it weren’t for bush-care groups, these trails would never grow back. Even then, it would take thousands years. And that’s not the only damage caused by the trail building.
M: They scare away the wildlife… especially small birds, who get scared about human activity anywhere near them, especially if it’s bike riding going down a hill, and then they depart. They won’t come back here.”
C: The council has since begun investigating the biking activities, installing cameras, flattening jumps and placing fallen logs on trails to deter riders. But Dylan Wildman says it won’t work: his peers still can’t get to the official trails, so they’ll keep building new tracks or go to new reserves.
Dylan: The council it seems like is always one step behind, they’re always reacting to what kids are doing…
C: You’re not angered by it.
D: No. I’m not angered by it, but I would like to see change. I would definitely like to see change.
C: What sort of change?
Dylan: To make sustainable trails that don’t damage the environment and allow kids to get out and enjoy nature and socialise with their friends and take risks in a safe environment.
C: Building sustainable trails is something Brisbane Off Road Riders Alliance president has been advocating for years.
Dan: BORRA and I personally don’t condone the illegal trail building. That’s why we’ve called out to Brisbane City Council to get together a master plan as quick as possible. We called this out for eighteen months. Put a master plan out and then the community will start to build to the master plan, rather than essentially it being underground.
C: The Council released a draft of those plans for community feedback last week. The plan identified 7 potential sites for mountain bike trails in Brisbane’s East, including Seven Hills Reserve and Whites Hill Reserve.
Dan: Number one on the list of what people want out of trails is sustainability. Literally 90% of people said that attribute of a trail was very important or important… That’s why we would really like to not be pitched as being on the opposite side a catchment groups. We think we’re on the same side – we’re all here to the save the forest… We don’t want to be riding on concrete paths or concrete jungles.
C: Dylan feels the same way.
D: See mountain bikers are environmentalists too, we do care about nature because if the nature isn’t there then we can’t mountain bike. It’s kind of like walkers - if the trails aren’t there, walkers can’t walk either. We’re just like them, we just do it on a bicycle.
C: So, would the Seven Hills bush-care group be willing to work with mountain bikers?
Michael: Well I think it should, if it came down to that. Seven Hills is of course only a very small area. So anything that you did in here what have a proportionately large impact on the environment.
M: You can open it up and you can have a responsible cycling group who are trying to look after it. But then you’ll find that there’ll be a minority of people who will take that opportunity to do some damage to some areas which can’t be regenerated. That’s the end of it if they do that. That’s actually happened at Whites Hill.
M: But yes we should work with the cyclists. Both Murray and me are cyclists. I’ve done my share of mountain biking as well. But I would never come in here.
C: In a statement to 4ZZZ, the Brisbane City Council says they're “exploring opportunities to establish off-road cycling facilities that are accessible to local communities, connected to existing bikeway networks, and suitable for people of different ages and skill levels.”
C: The Council’s Draft Off-road Cycling Strategy goes on to say “the Council will not be developing off-road cycling facilities within existing Habitat Brisbane and Creek Catchment group bushland restoration sites.”
C: Carindale dirt jump biker Akira Garett says the council needs to build those sustainable trails fast.
Akira: I’m more scared about what the impacts to the environment are going to be in the long run if this keeps going I guess.
C: It won’t be easy, but Dylan Wildman is optimistic about the future of mountain biking in Brisbane.
Dylan: We want challenges.
Dylan: I think that’s a good motto for life: what else can you do, what’s your next czallenge, what’s your next goal, and I think that’s at the heart of what mountain biking is.
C: Crispian Yeomans, 4ZZZ Brisbane Line