Potential Khanacross and Rally Venues

[fro]

Originally Posted by DamienS

Can someone explain why motor sport poses a risk to water catchment? Genuine question.

Mostly due to dust and sediment contamination of the waterways and catchments. Dave Gallacher is probably the best qualified to give you a detailed answer.

[smee]

Originally Posted by fro

Mostly due to dust and sediment contamination of the waterways and catchments.

As opposed to the other 360 days of the year when any Tom Dick or Mary can drive through the catchment areas without a care.

Makes perfect sense to me..

[DaveTrees]

Originally Posted by fro

Dave Gallacher is probably the best qualified to give you a detailed answer.

Yeah, I wrote a lengthy-ish post on this topic ages ago ... no idea which thread it is in though ! Someone could search it out if they could be bothered.

Bottom line .... probably the biggest potential sedimentation risk in water catchments is the roads themselves (as opposed to their usage, although the two things are related), and in particular the stream/gully crossings.

It really comes down to how much risk the land/catchment manager is willing to bear. For example, many of Melbourne's water catchments are completely closed off to any public use.

[Spac]

Originally Posted by smee

As opposed to the other 360 days of the year when any Tom Dick or Mary can drive through the catchment areas without a care.

Makes perfect sense to me..

As DaveT said of Melbourne's catchments, you're not allowed on Sydney/Wollongong's catchments at all.
As a teen, a group of mates and myself got caught riding our MTBs on Water Board land behind Wollongong. You get a written warning the first time, and a $10k fine if they catch you again...

I see the point WRT ACT catchements, however...

[Lyndall]

Originally Posted by Miss

Sutton Forest: actually Penrose/Belanglo... great potential, has previously been run as a private test track/rallysprint in the 90s (Lyndall???). Wingecaribbee Council has some funny by-law or whatever about no competition allowed on its roads. So, it's a dead end.

Other potential in the area is Wingello SF off Bimberalla Rd (sth), natural growth forest, however same Council area. Would have to be a daylight rallysprint on account of the f**k off huge wombats around here. If someone can find a loophole with council I'll run it as a run-what-you-brung AASA event.

I was checking out the Penrose/Belanglo/Wingello SF areas sometime between 1999 and 2001 for two purposes: a ride day, and for a film shoot location.

I did run the ride afternoon (for wives of motoring journo's who were on a three-day Magna launch from Sydney to Southern Highlands). I only needed a coupla km's - did pick out a loop, but Ed Ordynski (who was giving the gals the rides) was happy to just do it as an up-and-back track (to give them a scare with the 180 degree flick to spin the car round for the return run).

The "competitive" bit was on Basin Road I think, in Wingello State Forest. If you drive directly south of Wingello township on Bumballa Road, TR at TJ into Vinicombes Road, then TL into Clouts Creek Road, and TL again into Basin Road. Wingello 1:25,000 map - bottom centre of that map - if anyone still has that old-fashioned paper stuff. Sorry not into modern GPS stuff, but you'll see our start/finish point if you type 'Basin Road and Clouts Creek Road NSW' into Google Maps.

As we were only using the forest roads "competitively" with no transports, didn't need to involve the Shire so can't comment there. Forestry bods at that time were very helpful; even drove Timmy and I round for an hour or two or so to show roads the lead forester thought might work well, and for us to show him which ones we had already shortlisted (which unfortunately included many that they refused as in Water Catchment Areas, which others here have noted).

The film shoot location was for Mitsubishi to film Ed's rally car, to make a 3D film clip for Joe Public to watch on a huge screen at the Mitsubishi stand at the Sydney/Melbourne Motor Show. A bit of a drawback was that NSW Forestry insisted on a $10,000 (I think) fee per day for filming any type of commercial shoot on their land. However I ended up moving the film shoot to Tidbinbilla as Mitsubishi belatedly told me a lot of the filming would be from a helicopter, and the Wingello trees were too thick/high/close to the road to allow any decent shots from a helicopter. And a bonus is that ACT Forests don't have an equivalent commercial filming fee!

Did check out Belanglo but it was pretty rough and grotty at the time, so hard to string a few decent kms together. Recall a lot of it was in a grid pattern, so lots of straight roads and 90 degree corners into other straight roads. Also pretty dry and bare looking, so not as green and scenic as Wingello for the purposes of the ride day and film shoot.

If council is a pain, a single venue event like a rallysprint (as long as none of the transports don't use/cross Council roads like the Penrose main road) might be achievable - as long as you don't pick competitive roads in Water Catchment Areas. There are a few if's there, but the benefit is that the area is pretty central to Canberra, Sydney, Bathurst, dirty South Coast and even Riverina competitors and officials (just off the Hume Highway).

[tamsey]

Having driven pass Penrose/Sutton/Belanglo 4 times last week, I was wondering why we dont use it anymore.

Be great to get back in there, roads look great.

[global]

I have done Highland fling mtb race there (wingello / penrose) for last few years.

Roads would be great for rallies, need to pick out the good stuff, and It would need to be a 4 stages run twice type thing, but could work well.

Local community feelings would need close management.

[Lucky67]

I seem to recall Ian Bigg looked into Penrose (and surounds) as a possible venue a few years ago too. It wasn't that long after the backpacker murder conviction, so there were plenty of bad taste jokes about what we should call the rally.

Anyway, back on track, one of the main drawbacks that stopped us getting permission was on the grounds of road safety, and it was not what you would think.

The issue was that the trees were too small, and the roads too close to the freeway. So the risk was that Joe Public would see dust and rally cars, start to spectate and be distracted from the job at hand, which would be driving at approx. 110kmh and thus have an accident

[AV1611]

Ivan Malat was walking through Balanglo State Forest one evening, close to sunset. He was being accompanied by a young lady, who said "Ivan, I'm getting scared. Its nearly dark."
Ivan said, "You think you're getting scared? I'm going to be walking all the way back to the car by myself!"

[Ian Bigg]

Been there ... looked ... forestry OK ... Shell Garage near Penrose OK with being used for service (large sealed area out the back ... not many trucks during the day) ... council staff person very helpful ... council ... oh well - seemed like a good idea at the time.

Belangalo is pretty well all straight grid pattern with an interesting road around the fringes (except for the bare rock shelves which were 'different' to drive on) - some facilities in the forest like loos and a decent spectator point

Penrose - had two good approx 8km runs - one on the left of Penrose Forest Drive starting near the picnic area ... from the end of that transport straight across Penrose Forest Drive and then run along the edge of the forest and back up (this is where the cars would be highly visible from the highway - not so good) so maybe only 4 or 5 km usable distance

Wingello - very large wombats, some limited facilities, neighbours that seem to like putting trees across roads, some nice bits of road and maybe up to 10km useful stage on one side ... a few km on the other side of a gully and an alternate way out (pending landowner permission) ... sort of promising ...

Actually had the proposal up in front of a council meeting with local traffic engineer supporting it .... but the strange 'no motorsport' local policy came into play (never did find out what caused them to put that in place originally - somebody or something upset them some years ago)

Other issue is that lots of the area falls in the catchment for a couple of rivers that are used to transport water between dams ... EPA have issues with that (apparently ... I didn't get that far)