Page 53 - AMB Freelist

Places That Rock
The Western Australia Road Trip
V2.0
WORDS JAMES LOBEGEIGER / PHOTOS DENZIL HEEGER
Aroad trip is a time honoured tradition, of going cool places and doing great things. Whether you hit the road for a surf trip, snow trip, climbing trip or of course a mountain bike road trip, one thing remains: there is a lot that goes into the organisation of a good road trip.
Where are we going to go? How long do we go for? Who is coming?
Where will we stay?
Who decides the playlist?
The list goes on. In the past, mountain
bike road trips in Western Australia were easy. There weren’t as many places with great trails to choose from. Usually you just went to a race, then called through another location on the way home to ride the trails
if you had extra time off work. But after the first Places that Rock Western Australia Road Trip in 2019, the list of places that missed
out was bigger than the trip itself. There was unfinished business.
Cut to late 2021. As Mike and the rest of
the east coast editorial team were out due to the hard border closure, we needed a totally Western Australian based crew to get the job done. With so many great trail developments in the past two years, there was a lot to go check out, with places to ride, people to meet, and burgers to sample.
After a heap of emails, messages, spreadsheets, and a Teams meeting, we had a crew, some locations and a schedule. On the last trip we looked at some of the favourite riding locations of the locals, places with established trail networks that rock. This time, the plan was to look at the proliferation
of trail development that has been happening in the South West, along with seeing if we could find some new favourites. With Rod Annear, of the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA), along for the trip we had the perfect inside man to give us the scoop on anything and everything in trail development in Western Australia.
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Goat Farm
Collie
Margaret River