Mischa and I headed south this morning to go on a relic track hunt.. It was a fun little road trip but not as fruitfull as the New Norfolk venture. Firstly we checked out the Franklin Velodrome. It is another outdoor oval affair, a round track, slightly banked with no real straights in it. Overgrown to hell and the edges were crumbling. Apperently someone pulled all the weeds out of it a few years ago slowing its rate of decay. Not a particularly inspiring track, probably would have been slighly below the quality of Newtown ‘s velodrome in its day..
Next we headed to Kingston to assess the old BMX track. It was trashed. Kinda a shame that BMX racing, like Track, has declined to a point were these tracks has been left untended to overgrow and fall into disrepair.
Our final stop was the TCA cricket ground at the Domain. Dave Welsh was telling me that back in the 1930’s they used to hold ‘grass-track’ races around the oval and that the banked turns are still in place.. Well we had to see this for ourselves… and yep, the banked velo track is still there!! Haha! I would love to hold some events there! Skid city!
Shame about the old Franklin track. I heard the Southern Pedals boys were working on it but it all got too hard. The weeds have all been poisoned, but there’s more work to be done and I suspect it’s been put in the too-hard basket. I did have a spin around there on the mountain bike and it’s not that inspiring a track for my money.
Mind you, a few determined blokes might e able to put it right.
Yeah, I reckon that if the time and money were going to be put into repairing a track, New Norfolk would be the way to go. It’s a corker.
Just spoke with Greg Dwyer who is the secretary of the Southern Pedals. The club will be discussing re-sealing the track at it’s upcoming meeting on Jan 8. See some of Greg’s comments below..
“I’ll bring this up (re-surfacing the track)at the next club meeting on the 8th Jan. We’re interested in getting it up and running and more than likely will probably get a sub-committee up and running. We cleared the track for night riding in the winter to save riding on wet and slippery roads. It went well. We have two quotes to have it re-surfaced both around the $100 000 mark”.