The ride was also altered so the entire section between Blackbutt and Moore was going to be ridden. Three of use also decided that we’d ride back up the ‘hill’ to Blackbutt. The town of Blackbutt sits on top of a Range of the same name. Between Moore and Blackbutt, there is a net climb of 450 metres, however the main climb up the range is the constant ascent between Linville and Benarkin.
In the week leading up to the ride, the weather reports were indicating the development of a major rain event, the worst of which was time to arrive on the Saturday of our ride. With non flexible airfares, there was nothing to do but suck it up and resigned to riding in wet and cold conditions.
Certainly, arrival into Brisbane, and the subsequent drive to Blackbutt was in gloomy conditions, and a good amount of rain fell overnight. Friday dawned damp, foggy and cold, but not actually torrentially pouring down.
The riders assembled and we rode a short block through town to the trail head, which occupies the old station site. The trail starts of with small climb of a couple of kms, then a slight drop to the site of the old Benarkin Station. There was never much of a station on the site, although the classic of QR toilets remain. Once you depart Benarkin, it is down hill to Linville, a shade under 20 km away.
While the standard of the trail surface is not of the standards of those found in Victoria, it is none the less quite adequate. Two of the bikes were ‘supermarket’ quality but handled the trail okay. The MTBs cruised with ease. There are some interesting bits where bridges have been removed over creek crossings, so you have a steep bank to descend, then ascend on the other side. The crossings themselves have concrete causeways built, but the banks have deep gravel, so you need to commit to a line if you want to do the crossing with any sort of momentum to climb out the other side. The top half of the range passes through quite thick forest, while the bottom half opens up where some nice vistas can be viewed. It is all very attractive. It rained lightly on and off during the descent but nothing too dramatic. The hardest part was keeping warm due to the lack of work rolling down the grade.
Rolling into Linville signalled the end the descent. The station is quite well preserved here, but the same can’t be said for some decaying railway rolling stock that has been placed at the site. I would suggest that the old wagons have reached a stage where they are beyond help and I fear for their future. Indeed, I remember looking at these years ago when they were still at Ipswich, and they were looking pretty poorly even then. We arrived before the local pub could reasonably be expected to be open, so we continued on to the small town of Moore, which signalled the end of the ride for two of our group, while for the remainder it was the half way point. Between Linville and Moore, the tail is a little more primitive, and actually departs from the old rail alignment (because a road now uses it) – this results in a more uneven profile and some steeper pinches, but was quite good fun on the MTB’s.
As the track was quite wet from a good shower that had gone through overnight, and what subsequently fell on us during the ride, we arrived just a little bit muddy. As we shook ourselves down like wet dogs, the proprietor of the cafe we had stopped at emerged with some towels for us to use – this was very welcome, and also demonstrated some business smarts where they displayed innovative ways of attracting the potential business a rail trail can generate.
After coffee and a feed, it was time for the first leg of the return journey – to the Linville pub. Here we were reunited with our riding mates from earlier – they had packed their bikes in a pre-positioned car and drove over. The Pub was used to very importantly ‘fuel’ up for the 20 km climb we had ahead of us. Once fuelled, we set off, noting that some rain had set in, and the track was now getting very wet and slippery. It was getting tricky climbing out of the creeks and a healthy coating of mud was beginning to cover the working parts on the bikes, and most of the riders. Working up the hill sort of warmed you up, but this work induced warmth was offset by the complaining muscles labouring up the hill. The group split up to climb at our own pace, although we tended to regroup at the gates along the way. The landmarks that we saw on the way down were slowly passed during the climb and it was with a bit of relief that the top of the range was reached when we rolled into Benarkin Yard. Although only slight railway grades any constant effort of over an hour feels really good when you stop doing it. Since we had gained altitude again, we had a resulting loss in ambient temperature, so a recovery stop could not be too long, as the cold began to seep through our wet clothes.
The ride for the final 5 km involved another small climb that no one seemed to remember descending earlier. This was finally crested and an easy roll for the last leg to Blackbutt followed, where our ride concluded.
The Brisbane Valley line is covered on its own page on this site. The old line is currently not continuous, as at time of writing, the Somerset Regional Council is reluctant to commit to financial responsibility for the missing section, despite funding being set aside for it, due to fears of maintenance cost blowouts. A petition has been launched to encourage the regional council to commit to the project and can be found at the change.org site for those interested in participating.
A Strava profile of the ride is included below the gallery. Next time I ride it, I will be looking the ‘KOM’ the range section of the climb!
