“Cycling tourism is the next great thing”: the long journey to restore a central railway path of Queensland | Queensland

The ghost station of many peaks is locked in a clutter of rocky and wooded hills. There is not much else in Littlemore now that a farm and a panel.

These sleeping and forgotten places in the Boyne valley in the Queensland center were once linked by hundreds of kilometers of train lines that swept an inner arc between the ports of Maryborough and Gladstone. Now, the sections of these tracks are gradually modern for slower forms of transport: the foot, the horse and the bicycle.

Restoring the entire interior rail trail 271 km from 271 km from Taragoola to Gayndah will be a long trip – if it is over, it would be the longest track in the southern hemisphere.

But for the retired farmer Mick Colyer, it is a company that could save the Boyne valley through which he first gathered cattle as a young guy.

“When these railways closed, so many people have been moved, there were no work,” said the member of the railway trails. “Small country cities are mainly died.

“So, to try to get people out in these small areas of countries, try to put money in companies in the cantons that prospered small communities … From the start, it was our vision.”

It is a vision that would require a dramatic U-turn of the dominant trends.

The 2006 census had 646 people in the Boyne valley. In 2011, this count fell to 379. In 2013, the Australian Statistics Office no longer considered the four surviving colonies of the Boyne Valley as “urban centers and localities” – or cities – because of their declining populations.

Then, in 2020, the only ad in the valley turned off its taps.

But there are already signs that the promise of the railway path may have started to collect steam.

After years of community meetings, the first section of the refurbished track officially opened at the end of 2021. Current about 26 km from an abandoned railway covering in the Kalpowar forest called Barrimoon, he descends the Dawes channel through six tunnels and passes many peaks to the village of Builyan.

A year later, a second section of Trail opened, south of the Boyne valley along the banks of the Burnett river. This extends about 30 km from Mundubbera to Mt Debateable, an abandoned rail rail near Gayndah. The two cities challenge the title “Citrus Capital of Queensland” – to which Gayndah exercises his claim in the form of a large orange and Mundubbera with a great Mandarin. Between these two landmarks, a railway path now winds through citrus groves, general swings of the burnett and abandoned wooden railway bridges which cross its tributaries.

The first triumph of these sections of the new path came last December, when the big hotel of many summits again opened its doors under a new direction.

After eight years at the Gladstone Regional Council and having played a central role in setting up the community group which leads the railway, Desley O’Grady and her husband, Craig, moved to many peaks, bought the historic ad that fell back on her old train line and called for volunteers to help clean it.

O’Grady says that the participation rate of more than 40 people testifies to how the inhabitants of the valley have missed their meeting place. But she knows that she will need more than their support to keep its doors open.

“There are only 25 people who really live in many summits itself,” explains Ogrady. “So we know that we are a tourist destination hotel.”

And one of the biggest drawing cards in the Boyne valley, she says, is the railway path.

“The reason why we have bought the hotel is that over the past 12 years, we are going on different railway trails, seeing what happened in different states and different cities,” said the publican. “Cycling tourism is the next great thing, I think.”

This conviction seems to bear fruit. Last Sunday, said O’Grady, the Grand Hotel served 180 meals. Many were cyclists.

But important challenges await us on the Boyne Burnett initiative. There are the pure distances involved, the quantity of work required to make the sections and sandy sandy section, its ravines intervenes. There is the fact that all this work is motivated by volunteers dispersed in low -populated areas.

And the entire Boyne Valley business community is not sold on the railway path.

Hugh Harvey directs what he claims to be the only other operating company in this Valley hospitality and retail trade sector – a general store in the city of Ubobo, which has a population of about 20 years. With fuel, grocery store and equipment, Harvey sells truncated coolers with the slogan: “I am a Ubobo hob.”

Although it is not yet officially opened, the path in front of Ubobo was noted and Harvey has noticed that some cyclists have been teaching lately.

But he has “no interest” on the path that passes in meters from his business of almost two decades.

“Over the years, we have had a lot of different groups here – and you can classify your groups in money expenditure and tight Arses,” explains Harvey. “Bushwalkers, bicycle runners, amateur ornithologists, horse riding groups … In the end, they are not money expenses.”

While some in the field could still be convinced, Brent Moyle of the University of Griffith said that other railway trails have proven to be “a shot in the arm for country cities” in Australia by providing “stable and reliable tourism”.

Further south, Brisbane Valley’s railway path was completed in 2018 and is recognized as a boom in accommodation, revitalization of country pubs and job creation.

Professor in tourism by emphasizing the regeneration of distant communities, Moyle recognizes that the Boyne Burnett is “unlikely to draw crowds at the Brisbane valley overnight”. But, he said, it could “carve a faithful niche of cyclists, hikers and caravanists chasing authentic rural experiences”.

“We only scraped the surface of the railway trails in Australia,” explains Moyle.

And for Colyer, the railway path is not a matter of economy. Yes, the old sidewalk has his time and energy to a cause that he hopes to bring money into the Boyne valley. But it also does it in principle.

“This is an asset belonging to the public,” explains Colyer about the path. “And that’s also what we have all been every time: just to have an asset, belonging to people, that people can use.”

And although Colyer is not sure that the vision of the longest railway route in Australia is realized during his lifetime, there is already a new set of pioneer cyclists who draw the best party from this asset.

To mark the opening of the barrimoon tunnel section of the trail in 2021, Andrew Demack of Peak Advocacy Group Bicycle Queensland has traveled more than 680 km over nine days, connecting the Boyne Burnett to two other railway paths, via a chain of rear and some main, from Ipswich to Gladstone.

The trip required planning and experience, he said – but it has proven that cycle paths could one day cover such sprawling trips.

“Well, it’s ambitious, but it’s certainly a dream that Bicycle Queensland is subscribing,” he says.

In the meantime, however, Demack says that there is already an increasing network of “large recreational trails”. And the Barrimoon section in Builyan du Boyne Burnett, with its view of the peaks and valleys of tropical forests of grass trees, gums and rolling paddocks, he says, is “particularly superb”.

“This is one of the most spectacular small pieces of railroad that we have in Queensland.”