Ben Masterman
We have our suspicions, we have some shadowy figures appearing on cameras, and we have some intel from other riders, actually.<\/p>\n
Ryk Goddard
How do they get the intel?<\/p>\n
Ben Masterman
Well, sometimes there are discussions in certain shops that are overheard. Sometimes there are riders, loose-lip, sinking ships kind of situations at bike parks and things like that. I myself was at the Hardline event and overheard some young frothers talking about, oh, someone’s leaked Big Pharma, and so on. So it is quite a small community. Increasingly, there are apps like Strava where they have these traces, if you like, of where people go. They’re called heat maps. And whether you actually are using that app or just have a phone with location services on, I’m not an IT person, I don’t know the nitty-gritty, but my understanding is that your phone will ping your location all the time if it’s got the location services on, and whether or not you’re using that app, the app is sort of aware that there’s a phone there. So we can see that trace.<\/p>\n
Ryk Goddard
This is like Casablanca. This is like, round up the usual suspects. This is like the police who created that messaging app for criminals that they all used, and then they tracked them. So people are betraying their own presence. How extensive is it?<\/p>\n
Ben Masterman
It’s become significant. Four different tracks have been detected or reported in less than 12 months. And two of those I stumbled on, and two were reported by riders, as I was saying earlier.<\/p>\n
Ryk Goddard
Ben Masterman, what authority do you have to deal with it?<\/p>\n
Ben Masterman
Well…<\/p>\n
Ryk Goddard
As a ranger, are we riding out?<\/p>\n
Ben Masterman
Yes, Ryk, let’s do it. We have under the Wellington Park Act and the Wellington Park regulations, all sorts of different offences and penalties that can be imposed on the spot. Fines starting at $205 for picking up a stick, effectively. But cutting standing timber, contravening signs, having a bike, not even riding it, just having a bike off a bike track is itself an offence. And we can deal with them on the spot if it’s a minor thing. But if there’s a real problem and a series of different offences, then it has to go to court and the magistrate can impose up to 20 times that sum for each of those offences. But we just don’t want it to get there. We want to educate and sort of prevent. So messages like, you’re shooting yourselves in the foot, guys. In Hobart, riders and builders have the opportunity to join the track care program. It’s just not sexy enough perhaps sometimes because it’s more about maintenance and, you know, keeping the existing tracks going rather than building brand new ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben MastermanWe have our suspicions, we have some shadowy figures appearing on cameras, and we have some intel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,329302,36367,329303,3186,85,39746,217306],"class_list":["post-682941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-free-riding","tag-illegal","tag-mount-wellington-mountain-bike-trails","tag-mountain-bike","tag-sports","tag-tracks","tag-wellington-park"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}