Australian Cycling Forums - Bicycles Network Australia

Hoping some of the good folks around the Illawara can help me out.

I've just returned to uni at UOW and have some big gaps in my timetable so decided to scope out some rides to make use of the time. Living in Sydney I don't know any of the roads around there other than up Mt Ousley but not keen on dancing up there with all those trucks (amazed some have on Strava though!). So I did a little recce around yesterday and was bummed to find out Mt Keira is closed to traffic because of the risk of rock falls. Do you guys and girls down there still ride up there or am I going to be the cyclist that gives us all a bad name if I do?

Any other possible ~1.5-2 hours around the Mt Keira campus worth doing?

Cheers

If it were just rockfalls, they'd knock down the obvious rocks and catch fence it, but its also subsiding, so the council can never be sure its providing a safe surface for descending. They've spent near $2mil trying to keep it open and I can understand why they aren't tossing good money after bad.

The main issue for a road authority is not whether or not a road is safe (they are almost entirely legally protected against legal issues arising from neglect - the simple reason is that a road authority is seldom funded sufficiently to be able to perfectly and timely maintain everything it controls), but if they do work and then open a road, then the worked on section does in fact have to be in a serviceable state, ie they have much weaker legal protections from negligent work or negligent assessments.

There was an article in today's paper about it.

Cost is $200-400k to fix and not a priority. Closed for peds and cyclists until further notice.

Probably not a good idea to go up there.

After the gate at the archery range there are 6 double barriers further up preventing access below the landslip area. Quite ruins the descent and is a pain on the way up.
We're hoping that the Council might move the gate further up the hill so you could climb up past the hairpin and get a bit more of a climb in, but at the moment repeats of the kicker are proving to be a good workout.

As for alternatives there's Mt Kembla (Courdeaux Rd) and then Harry Graham Dr over to the top of Mt Keira - it's a good climb.