Track/Trail works in the Grampians

While in Canada we distinguish trails from roads from highways, in Australia most roads and highways are sealed bitumen (not much worry about frost heaves) and anything else you can travel along is referred to as a track. This is further broken down into vehicle tracks and walking tracks. The Grampians has a wide array of 4x4 tracks and caters to 4x4 clubs although they are not allowed to travel off of formed tracks. The tracks are much like the old dirt roads we used to have criss-crossing Riding Mountain that were subsequently converted to trails. The Grampians has a lot of them, as many of the tracks double as fire breaks.


Out of curiosity I ran a quick query on all the tracks, roads and highways in the Grampians and they total close to 2000 km which compares to the 500 - 600 km of trails, roads and highways in Riding Mountain which is twice the area of the Grampians. So 4 times the length in half the area in a park much more challenging to put roads and tracks into.

Speaking of which, one of the track recovery crew leaders (thanks Graeme) sent out these photos of a piece of equipment they use on walking tracks to move stone steps and gravel around. It is called a power barrow and as you can see they use it in some pretty challenging terrain.







The Grampians have some extra funding to recover many of the tracks that were impacted by the Mt. Lubra Fire. They have crews to do the impressive work on the walking tracks which involves stone steps, steel railings and grate or boardwalk portions that are being designed to be more immune to fire. Outside of this special funding there is basically one person responsible for walking tracks and three people who look after the mowing/slashing/grading of all the roads and vehicle tracks the park is responsible for. The state of Victoria, VicRoads looks after the paved roads in the park.