Rail trail. Episode 10. The saga continues.

Why are Armidale Regional Council, along with Glen Innes Severn Council as their partner in the crime of the century, continuing to flog the dead and beaten horse to try to get it across the line and waste more time while pilfering ratepayers’ hard-earned cash to fund the rail trail project that has drastically failed? I thought it was dead. At least that’s what Sam said. But like a ghost from Halloween, it’s back from the dead.

Councils around the country are throwing rail trail ideas out over the financials, yet meanwhile Armidale and Glen councils are using ratepayers’ funds to revive the dead horse, with another one and a half million dollars looking set to be flushed down the sewer, with no guarantee there will even be grants big enough to fund the rail trail of broken dreams and broken hearts. They tried. It failed. Nothing has been learnt, and the stubbornness continues. Now they are just throwing effort and money at more foolishness.

The public was led to believe the New England Rail Trail would be a 200-kilometre tourist attraction that would put us on the map and bring international fame and national applause. Now it’s been reduced to a local bike path and gone completely off the rails. It’s lost its scope and all hope. Even if they could pull a rabbit out of their magic hat and find money growing on a government tree somewhere to complete it to its promised full length and potential, it would cost well over 100 million dollars to build.

To complete it and make it an actual tourist attraction that would gain worldwide recognition, well, that would need another appointment with a bank manager. To be continued… Then there are the bills to pay, the lawns to mow, the bridges to fix, the toilets to clean, and the advertisers to pay. Even the Gold Coast has to advertise to attract tourist dollars from across the globe.

After dropping numbers on the Northern Rivers trail, they’ve had to employ a trail manager to manage and promote it, with an advertised handsome salary package of $100,000 a year plus perks to try to get the pedalling in motion and get people to come back. It seems it’s been ticked and flicked, and everyone’s gone on to their next photo opportunity — another fleeting moment in the rail trail fad. Once you’ve done it, you’ve done it. On to the next leg of the dying horse.

“New England Rail Trail: been there, done that” might be the best T-shirt merch opportunity, because that’s what happens. Along with “I survived the New England Rail Trail on a cold and icy winter’s day” for a bumper sticker. There are cool climates, and then there’s just too cold to go outside — wind chill cruising along at 20 knots in Lycra with icicles up your nose.

For six to nine months of the year, those coastal people who think anything below 15 degrees is freezing point definitely won’t be moving from the fireplace to go riding, no matter how many tourist dollars you think you might make selling thermal underwear to unaware tourists who didn’t realise it was going to be this cold. Not many are training for Everest these days — that’s already been conquered, and the novelty has worn off too.

Bali seems to be the big winner: cheap, cheap, cheap. It is a cost-of-living crisis, after all. Everyone’s tightening their spending — except the councils, who seem to be throwing around other people’s hard-earned cash without a care in the world. Meanwhile, we’re giving up coffee and avo on toast to pay off our mortgages and power bills, so I’m not sure how all these cafés will survive.

The average Australian is finding it harder and harder to put fuel in the car, let alone take time off work to have a holiday. And if they are holidaying or doing their big lap, they’re pretty self-sufficient in a 4WD or caravan with all the mod cons, looking for the cheapest possible place to park up — the freer, the better. Luckily, in NSW you can sleep in your car and it’s not a crime, unlike Queensland where they’re forced to pay for accommodation.

Of course, stealth car camping won’t become a by-product of a rail trail, so the car dwellers caught in the rental crisis have somewhere to go — well, at least until we put up no camping signs everywhere. Of course, they cost money too. I guess just put it on the tab and send the bill to the ratepayers.

Luckily, it’s always too cold in winter here, so for six months of the year that won’t be a problem. The trail won’t come without problems. Just ask New Zealand ratepayers how they feel about rising rates to accommodate tourists. Of course, the small few who are cashing in don’t have much to complain about. Meanwhile, the rest of us foot the bills and go without. No avo on toast with a latte on the side for the rest of us. Some of us have to sacrifice.

Perhaps the council might give us jobs picking up rubbish left behind by all the projected incoming tourists. By the time this is over, we’ll need two jobs to pay the rent — or maybe we can just become stealth campers beside the rail trail we’ve been lumped with funding. At least then we’d get some form of benefit and use from it.

Happy camping, everyone.

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