More recreational use of Rabbit Island urged
I’ve just got back from an eight-day drive around the South Island.
While it all revolved around visiting the extended family, I was keen to keep to a training schedule while trying out some different tracks and trails.
It wasn’t all plain sailing. Sitting in a car for protracted periods isn’t easy as you get older and I had a lot of trouble with my lower back and hamstrings.
My secondary mission was to to research a story for my weekly column. With this in mind, I’d thrown my old mountainbike on the back of the car with a view to trying out as many trails as I could and seeing how they measured up to Rabbit Island.
I’m familiar with many of the trails close to my home in The Brook and I’ve heard about, but not ridden, the trails at Sylvan Park in Richmond.
The truth is, I’m a lousy mountainbike rider – timid too – and my chosen sport of triathlon requires that I mostly ride on the road, so I can’t really say I know the trails of Nelson well.
However, I do feel strongly about Rabbit Island. I lived on the Waimea Plains for more than a decade while my kids were growing up and I’ve run and biked extensively in the forest for more than 35 years. The limited number of trials I experienced on my recent trip only reinforced my view that we’re being short changed.
On my recent trip I had three training days in Hanmer. In an area that seems smaller than Rabbit Island, there are walking, biking and horse riding trails of all levels. It’s a maze of intersecting pathways and there’s something for everyone.
On Tuesday I biked the basic Easy Rider – 6km of flat easy trail close to the village where I could pump along without too much technical challenge – I threw in some diversions to make up an hour before returning to my car – conveniently parked outside the pools – and setting off on a run.
This time I found the Majuba Trail to return. A couple of metres away was a parallel bike trail – Swoop – which formed an intermediate level loop with the Swamp Trail I’d run the week before.
It was a common occurrence to find bike, walk and horse trails close together, fully utilising the forest for all users.
In Christchurch I drove out to McLeans Island. It just reinforced how lucky we are here. It’s a desolate spot with few scenic virtues, but an imaginative bike trail made it a lot of fun.
There’s nothing hard about the loop of 10km or so, but the designers have put every imaginable curve and hump into it.
All the corners are banked, so you can take it as fast as you like, swooping into the curves and hopping over the little rises.
I really enjoyed doing a couple of laps, despite the fact that it was a bit wet and my bike finished up thick with mud.
Sadly I didn’t manage a bike ride in Dunedin or Queenstown, but I did enjoy a rather chilly run along the farther reaches of the Chard Farm road, where a family birthday party was being held. But back to Rabbit Island. I can’t help but think we’re being taken advantage of here. It’s Crown land, meaning that it belongs to us, the people of this country.
The Tasman District Council has the job of managing it, but they seem to have handed the whole thing over to a forestry company who are making the rules about the island’s use.
That’s just not good enough. Just who is making money off our land? It’s a recreational area that we should have full use of. Let there be trees and a forest industry, but in this space it should be worked around the public use.
When active work is not being carried out, recreational users should be free to range across the island. The council and the various clubs should be free to create trails for walkers, runners, cyclists and horse riders.
It’s a fabulous resource for recreation and the health of the community – it’s time we got to use it as we should.