Written by Matt Barnes

Over the last twenty or thirty years a lot of areas in the greater Blue Mountains regions have been used and sadly abused by many four wheel drivers. Four wheel drives have had a fairly free run of the track through the forests and parks of the Blue Mountains in that time and sometimes, private land was included in many people’s trips, assuming it as crown land.

One of these little parcels of land, Dingo Dell, was recently sold by its long time owners to the Price family. The Price’s owned the adjoining property. Unfortunately, a small area of this land had become a favourite camping spot for many four-wheel drivers trying to “get away from it all”. It was unfortunate because a small group of these had abused the privilege and had driven up the sides of the ridge to the banshee fire trail, creating many new tracks that became a concern for the price’s after they bought the block.

The problem was with weed migration and erosion. The erosion takes silt and seeds downstream into the National Park and the Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment. The concern was that they were required to fix these problems or be fined.
Our club was approached by the Price family in November, 2006, asking us to remove a trip report from our website that may encourage traffic through this sensitive area. We agreed to take it off the site, but then offered our help with the erosion problems up there.

Initially offering our own manpower to attack the property it became clear after the first site visit by a delegation from theLROC that this was going to be a big job.

Word of our new association with Mr Price got to 4WDNSWACT and they wanted to be involved. So the word went out and we were inundated with offers for help from many clubs each with their own interest in the area both within the association and outside it as well.

An agreement was made with the landowner that the area where most of the damage was concentrated was to become a fenced camping reserve for the use of associated clubs. Coincidentally, this was the most popular camping area in previous times.
With materials subsidised by the NPWS and the Hawkesbury-Nepean Catchment Management Authority, our contribution was purely labour and the utilisation of our four wheel drives.

The project focus was to create silt barriers on the eroded tracks. These were to be mostly constructed of locally cut logs laid across the track, held in place by recessing them into the embankment on either side and anchoring the centre with a few star pickets.

Apart from the 13 eroded tracks that needed repair, it was realised that all of our work would be in vain if other cars were able to drive over them again before they were stabilised. So assistance with fencing the camping area and the Banshee track was provided.

At the current rate, an average of one weekend every second month, the majority of the work is expected to be completed by the end of 2008.While the LROC is managing this project on the behalf of the 4WD Association the job has only been possible with the help of some of the other 4WD clubs in the Association.

More information on this project and how you can become involved can be obtained from the Public Relations officer who can be contacted via email on publicrelations@lroc.com.au