Tamworth Mountain Bike Park a hidden recreational gem

“Leave nothing but trails” is the mountain biker’s motto – and it’s a principle the Tamworth Mountain Bike Club takes seriously.

There’s a good reason for that. The club wants to keep the Tamworth Mountain Bike Park in pristine condition, so the rest of the community can enjoy it.

Steve Mair, the driving force behind the facility, said the park is a multi-purpose recreational ground.

“We didn’t build this for the Tamworth Mountain Bike Club,” Mr Mair said.

“We formed the club to create the park. We’re here to service the community, and that’s always been our philosophy.”

Mr Mair has just stepped down as club president, a position he held for the past five years, to focus on finishing the park’s grant project.

The club was given $188,000 from the NSW government, which it has used to build toilets, shelters, a playground, an Aboriginal cultural trail and a skills park, which should be finished in the coming months.

“Once that’s done, I’m going to enjoy more riding and less administration,” Mr Mair said.

Club treasurer Jeff Benson said the skills park would be the only one outside of Sydney and Mount Stromlo in Canberra.

“No one else has anything like this,” Mr Benson said.

With rollers, tabletops, switch backs, seesaws, logs and a ramp that goes through a tree, it’s not hard to see why the skills park will be big drawcard.

“It will teach rideability – balance, coordination, what speed you should be going, how to use your body to ride over bumps; all the basics,” Mr Benson said.

The park has 12kms of mountain bike tracks, all in loops. “It’s a clover leaf design, so you’re never more than 700 metres from the centre,” Mr Mair said.

“No other place is like that, and when you’ve got kids it makes it easy, because you know they’re not far.”

Each of the trails is graded, “the same as ski tracks”, so there is something for everyone, from novice to pro.

The park has also been specifically designed to cohesively blend different generations, with kids, teenagers and adults all sharing the same space.

“There is a method to the madness, that blending naturally promotes a village effect and creates a social atmosphere,” Mr Mair said.

The park has the “best views in town” from the top of the mountain, along the Sky Line loop.

“Lots of mountain bike parks have a Sky Line track, so we thought we better have one too,” Mr Mair chuckled.

“The view is probably even better than Flagstaff – you come up here at dawn, and it is spectacular.”

If mountain biking isn’t your thing, that’s OK. There is still plenty to do, and you don’t have to worry about being knocked over by a mountain bike.

“There are give way signs at all crossings – and mountain bikes aren’t going 40-kilometres an hour like a road bike,” Mr Mair said.

There are a number of walking tracks, including a 2.5km Aboriginal cultural trail which goes past four or five different sites.

“This is the way they use to walk to go to the Daruka quarry to get stones for their axes,” Mr Benson said.

“Down by the creek there is a grinding grove rock, where they ground grain or sharpened weapons.

“There are also a couple of trees with scars – those are signposts to the Aboriginal people. You’d see those, stop, light a fire and the locals would see the smoke, come to you and guide you through their land.”

Mr Mair has been working with Oxley Clontarf Academy to build a ceremonial bora, or meeting place.

“The boys will build it as part of their initiation,” Mr Mair said.

“It would be somewhere to sit with some rocks marking the place – it’s not a sacred site and it’s not for Aboriginals only. It’s a community space and somewhere an elder might come to have a chat with one of them.”

The walking trail goes right through Mr Mair’s favourite part of the park – Secret Valley.

“It’s a really pretty little gorge that opens up in the bush, and Spring Creek flows through it,” he said.

“People live in Tamworth their whole life and have no idea this is on their door step.”

Before it was the Tamworth Mountain Bike Park, the area was an old stock route – which was often over stocked.

The club has been working hard to return the bush back to its former glory and has planted 1500 native trees.

“Mountain biking is green sport, it’s about appreciating the environment and leaving a minimum impact on it,” Mr Mair said.

“I remember when I first went to council and applied to build tracks. Part of the argument was; if it doesn’t work out, we walk away, they’ll grow over and you’ll never know they were there.”

The park has no garbage bins. “What you bring in, you take out, that’s part of the mountain bike policy,” Mr Benson said.

The club has about 80 members, a third of whom are children, and it always welcomes new members.

But you don’t have to be a member to ride your bike on the tracks, or enjoy the park.

Mr Benson’s sport of choice was long distance running and mountain climbing, but he got into mountain bike riding when “the old knee started to give away”.

“What I find with mountain biking, is the exercise is excellent – it’s pedal, pedal, pedal, heart rate up, and then it slows down as you go downhill,” he said.

“I can do a four hour ride and pull up the next day as if nothing has happened.”