62 - AMB
Nothing is more iconic than an
Australian backdrop of golden
beaches or suburban backyards
littered with plastic cricket bats.
Although as a mountain biker, you
might have had different icons as a kid. Most of us
had posters of towering ridgelines, the best riders
plastered against its backdrop with the mountains
seemingly spiralling into the picture itself - the
image preserving a moment in time that only
something in print can do. There was time to
pause and appreciate the effort in how that image
came about - and the interaction we had with the
photo helped to inspire our next day’s adventure,
ride or race.
It is becoming diffi cult to capture a moment in
time like we did previously. Social media, in all
it’s wonderful glory, brings with it just as much
evil. When was the last time you fl icked back
through Instagram to see a clip of your favourite
rider defying what you thought were the common
laws of physics? No longer can we peer back at
the progression of the sport, where someone
would make an order of magnitude leap into
the future, perfect their craft in silence before
releasing it to the world via VHS or print - leaving
the rest of us picking our jaws up off the fl oor.
Even now I am still able to recount blow-by-blow
each scene, rider and location from all the early
movies, having rinsed everyone one of them until
the player broke. Now, social media ports it to us
in live feeds, or short looping videos, interrupting
our daily tasks.The epic locations where these videos and images
were shot allowed us to escape for a moment the
reality of our day-to-day life. At least, that’s what
I would imagine most suburban bike fans would
think - unless you won the dream lottery as a kid
and had the chance to grow up in the Victorian
Alps... like I did.Home amongst the mountainsRare for the southern hemisphere, and in
particular Australia, winter takes hold of a large
chunk of accessible riding here in Victoria. And
we’re not talking your typical mud ride, but often
two metres of hard packed snow. This land grab
by Mother Nature is a good thing - in the age
of overreaching entitlement, where everything
must be within easy reach of your fi ngertips, it’s
sometimes nice to have an enforced period ofcontemplation. It’s worth the time to sit down and
realise just what is on offer in this special part of
the world.Dedicated bike parks are springing up all over
the place, but take a quick look beyond the buzz
words of the marketing campaigns and you will
fi nd endless hours of backcountry riding that
has remained largely hidden, and helped mould
some of Australia’s and indeed the world’s best
and brightest riders. Iconic townships of Mount
Beauty, Bright and Falls Creek all feature so
close together they can be accessed in one day
for any over-excited individual keen to escape the
confi nes of city life.Falls Creek is where most of the untouched and
still unknown riding really exists. Differing from
the purpose-built trails of Mount Buller, the
backcountry of Falls Creek is something akin
to the posters we had on the wall as children.
The backcountry is about as accessible as it is
unknown to the wider cycling community. The
development of the hydro scheme in the early
1960s laid all the ground work for the trails,
which have naturally been settling back into
the environment ever since - with only hints as