Mountain Biking - where to life

Lets pretend mountain biking has a very high priority in your life and not only that but your career is build around it. Where in Australia would you base yourself? What region/city has the best riding and is at the same time very livable?

Canberra.
With the modern office, you can talk on the phone and send emails from anywhere.
Drive to Sydney or Melbourne reasonably easy when required from Canberra if needed.

Hobart. No question of it. If you have a profession that means you can work from a satellite city that that would be ideal.

Or how about Bright, VIC?

In Australasia? Wellington, NZ. incredible singletrack within 2km of the CBD. Bullshit good riding there. … Or Rotorua, Nelson or Queenstown. NZ has it firmly over Australia for mountains.

I’d move to NZ in an instant if it were just me :wink: And while I know about the great potential of Tassie, the mainland would be prefered in my assumption. I was thinking of Canberra as well as I like the size of the city(dont like big ones and living in Sydney is a bit of a pain really if Im honest) but am not sure if the riding potential is really that good. Will be there to ride and learn in two weeks though.

There is this guy in CBR.

yep, I was amazed at how good Welly was when I was back, can single track commute!

What portion of your career?

Are you a sponsored rider? Bright/NZ
Or are you a sales rep? Bright/canberra/wherever your main branch is.
Or are you a mechanic? Melbourne/sydney/brisbane/cairns
Do you have a retail store? Melbourne/sydney/brisbane/cairns

Thanks Ezy, this may be something to start with. Funnily enough I’ve googled stuff like that in Canberra several times now and these guys never came up.

Thanks for the input guys. Where my career is heading to is not clear yet but that it will be in mountain biking is pretty much a given.

I am going to throw out Orange as a potential destination for making a career out of MTB - they have the Kinross trails, and are about to open up Mt Conoblas. The sport is only going to grow there, you can ride all year round and there is a great arts scene as well. Not to mention only 3.5hrs fro Sydney & the ACT, great wines and 2 local craft breweries.

Canberra has the best mountain biking in oz IMO

Queenstown, Rotorua but to be honest even Brisbane has good mountain biking but it’s all what you make if it if I was serious if be in whistler

I reckon Melrose in SA would be a good case study for you. I only passed through and am not sure how it started, but it’s pretty much a tiny town next to a few big hills and somehow they’ve built up this awesome set of trails and people come from all over to ride them. There’s only one bike shop, but it’s a ripper, and the owners are on a great wicket by the look of it. The model is probably exportable.

I guess its already considered, but good palces already have a lot of people servicing the MTB community, so getting some elbow room might be harder. Orange is an interesting suggestion! Canobolas has a run that I’d be keen to do one day, but hadn’t heard of the riding there.
I’m not sure if you did get down the Canberra to see the riding on offer? As a local, its easy to take it all for granted. Compared to everything I’ve seen in NSW, and how dispursed it all is, Canberra is an unbelievable hot spot for MTB. And there are dormant trails waiting to be resurrected, it will continue to grow.

Kowen/Sparrow must have 80k of singletrack, Stromlo maybe 45, Bruce has maybe 15 or so, Majura now must be getting back to 25-ish and is growing quickly and Jerra maybe 25 too. That’s getting close to 200km of singletrack within 40mins of my house, none of it is bad. About half:half pines:dry which gives options no matter the weather. Add to that Blue Range, a custom built national elvel mtb area that was gutted in fires a year after it was built…its apparently back on for DH, and if I get my way in the next 3 years or so, there will be more XC out there too. Also within 40mins from my house.

The ACT destroys even Tassie (and NZ) for % area designated as national park, and all of it reachable within a day on an mtb from the city, rising to 1800m or so above sea level easy.

Canberra is and (I think) always will be very tough to beat for riding off road.