Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Burnley Bouldering Wall 20-Mar-2011 At 11:02:19 PM Crepuscular

Message

Hey folks,

I'm new to Chockstone, but I wanted to voice my disappointment that the Burnley climbing wall is still closed as of last week. I recall when CityLink simply ripped down the old Burnley one day without notifying anyone they were going to do so, and the subsequent campaign to get a replacement wall put up which took I think 2 or 3 years with many people volunteering time & their own money to get it built (how come there always seems to be funding for skate parks & kids playgrounds but no public money for something like a climbing wall?). Now the wall, and adjacent bike path have been closed for almost a year with no indication of when they may re-open, if ever.

I ride past on the way to work fairly regularly now & and am hard pressed to recall the last time I saw anyone actually working on the site. There are several signs advising cyclists the path will be closed during off-peak periods (9:30 am to 4:00 pm) until 11th March. However, it has not been opened during peak periods at all as far as I'm aware. 11th March has now been & gone. It seems the closure is now pretty much indefinately. I tried to contact Bicycle Victoria about this - despite the few thousand commuters (including me) who have been having to take a 1 km+ detour around twice a day, nobody at BV seems particularly interested. If you really search through their website (not at all obvious) there is a very brief statement suggesting the path (& presumbably climbing wall also) will now be closed until at least July. They apparently put this up on Mar 10th (like nobody at BV has been talking to CityLink to find out what's going on - or did CityLink only find the 'asbestos' just before the path was due to be re-opened after almost a year...).

If you search the CityLink website (again not easy to find this) they're blaming not asbestos, but flooding - back in January or whatever. I'm finding this all pretty frustrating as it seems obvious to me that CityLink have simply put this project on the backburner while they tend to other things. Seems like no skin off their nose if the bike path & climbing wall (that a lot of climbers paid for) are closed - they just treat everyone with contempt.

Anyone on Chockstone have any ideas as to what to do about this? Surely it's time for some sort of collective action?