Black Duck Valley motocross park closed for good
Posted on December 10, 2008
Filed Under Motorcycle parks | 2 Comments
The rumors you’ve heard are true. Black Duck Valley motorcycle park closed at 4pm on Monday, 8th December, 2008. The closure of the park is due to their insurance provider canceling the insurance policy they held for public liability insurance. The exact reason for canceling the policy is not known, however speculation suggests the bad publicity they had received from the clueless state coroners inquest earlier this year suggests that it is a high risk business to insure. Given the state of the current financial markets, insurance companies will be looking to drop high risk business in favour of lower risk entities so that it can maximise profits.
Motocross tracks in South East Queensland are dropping like flies and others are not being given permission or support by local councils. An organisation needs to pick up the ball and influence the right people to put the sport back on the radar and support its followers. I myself have two young daughters who ride for fun and do not have the skills, ability or desire to ride at one of two clubs with 75km of brisbane whose primary focus is competition racing.
2008 has seen a large jump in dirt bike sales but a fall in places to ride. Surely the closure of places to ride should be a concern to Pro motorcycles and team moto, not to mention the scores of chinese importers. Where will these bike be used, on the streets, on off road trails, public parks? These places will cause many more injuries and complaints than a park with supervision, track maintenance and coaching miles from anywhere. Then what, ban dirt bikes all together?
Why can’t the govenment or motorcycling australia or maybe even a corporate sponsor like Red Bull, Global Action Sports or a manufacturer like Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, Yamaha and KTM support black duck valley. Some of these companies will suffer along with the rest of us if we don’t have anywhere to ride.
Park owner Kate Diete said that they are looking at selling the land in 250-acre blocks for between $200,000 and $400,000. “Yes, pretty angry, was a place to ride, was my job, was my whole lifestyle,” he said. Maybe the owners are just sick of fighting a never ending battle.
In my local area they have just spend a million dollars on a new skate park. I’m sure there are quite a few injuries as a result. Why not provide a controlled area for dirt bike riding, enforce licensing and bike scrutineering, supervision and training. Hey, why not support a park that’s already here and make it better? Not that they could do much to improve the tracks at black duck valley, the tracks are well maintained and safe.
A club in SEQ mentioned recently on their web site that if they didn’t get enough volunteers to help with club duties than the track would not receive the maintenance it should and potholes would appear once again. A club fully backed and insured by Motorcycling Queensland. So why can’t MQ back Black Duck Valley, their tracks are prepped nearly every day and the don’t expect the riders to help.
Maybe Black Duck Valley could lease the land where the motocross tracks and/or fmx ramps reside to riders attending the park. The owners of the park retain ownership and the conditions of the lease state that the owners can terminate the lease without notice (it would expire the same day anyway), the owners must maintain the tracks and supervise much like a body corporate agreement? That way the riders at the park would be the owners and therefore would have to carry their own personal insurance and any liability suits would be against themselves. The riders and the park owners would be responsible for the condition and safety at the park?
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2 Responses to “Black Duck Valley motocross park closed for good”
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Mate, just had to reply to your post. I agree that it is really bad for the motorcycling community and the industry that black duck has closed down, but in my opinion there was quite a bit that could have been done differently. As much as I hate insurance companies, I agree that Black Duck was considered “High Risk.” Now Black Duck has followed the footsteps of Weekend Warriors into extinsion. Now you said that the tracks were safe and well looked after. Now I only went there twice and I wondered to myself when i got there if any maintenance had ever been done to the tracks ever. They were far from safe, you would have been better off running slicks rather than knobby tyres, because the tracks were so slick, and extremely slippery. Then add to that track design, and organisation. One of my biggest gripes was that there was no control in regards to anything. I went out for my first ride when I was there and was checking out the “advanced track” at a relatively slow pace really, on the first couple of laps, jumping a few of the medium sized tabletops, and checking out some lines, and as i was mid air over one of those tabletops, there is some tiny kid on his KX60 on the downramp riding at snails pace around the “advanced track.” I had to do well not to land on him. Now that was ridiculous, and no one in sight controlling who went where. Another thing that made me shake my head was the fact that you could rock up to this place having never ridden a bike before, build up some courage (or dutch courage, which i saw as well) and go out and hit these tracks with 100 foot and 140 foot jumps. No matter what you were riding or wearing. There were swappers there on old CR500s and the like riding in jeans and a shirt, no gloves, convinced they are the next Ricky Carmichael. No wonder people got hurt and killed. In my opinion the tracks were way to fast, for example the famous “80 footer track” as all the bandits called it had a straight on it you could tap out a 450 on. And the track was slippery as hell. The track designs were not thought out well at all. They tracks needed to be a lot slower, flow a lot better, have mulch put through them continously, as well as ripping them and watered constantly. Now I heard they had 14 full time staff. Now what were these people doing. Serving hot dogs cos they werent prepping the tracks, unless they just didnt know what they were doing. Now I really think a venture could be done properly and it needs to be done soon otherwise the sport is really going to fall in a heap in a big way, which will leave a lot of people probably leaving the sport, and those who do try and stick with it a lot of travel time just to try and get a ride. Now if you consider the state of the local SEQ motocross scene, it is in a real bad state and it would be good to hear from Motorycling QLD that forward steps were being made. Stanmore’s future is shaky at best, but have been told that the current land is ok until a replacement site is found, but then there seems to be not too many people keen on helping to keep the club alive, Tivoli is in a similar boat as far as land situation goes with the site set for development, with a replacement location to be found, Reedy Creek have been pushing there luck for years it seems but hopefully a replacement location is available to those guys, and then there is Coolum, which isnt super close, but still well worth the drive, but rumours suggest that they are under the pump too for there land. I really hope there are some positive steps made very soon for the future of our sport. Thanks for listening.
hi, just a quick comment. my brother his two sons ,myself and my son and daughter along with numerous friends all enjoyed black duck valley. not for the motorcross tracks but for the toyo loop and enduro loop trail rides,we weren’t about full speed and jumping just trail rides at a nice pace .this park suited us nicely now we have nowhere to ride these types of trails legally.i also ues my bike to and from work as does my brother both having our licences for more than twenty years, but now where can we teach our kids to ride safely the way we were at a young age