Tower Valley BMX Track ( Early Warrandyte Racing Club )

One of the earliest established tracks in Victoria, it held casual race meets soon after the original Lalor track was running.
I only rode there maybe twice during school holidays in 1982-83 where the track was then just a local riding track and not an 'official' race track anymore. I remember it's odd location, on a residential street, and simply a vacant 2-3acre block of land between 2 exisiting houses, cut into a hillside.
Nowadays it's been built upon, i drove past there in 2007 but i can't identify "which" block it might have been...
It's location was : Hall Rd, Warrandyte South, Melways 35 J7-8-9. 

Boronia BMX Track ( Boronia - Mac Cycles / early Knox Club Track )
Also one of the earliest established race tracks, the "Mac Cycles" Boronia track was known for it's often-muddy conditions during race meets, and well hidden location buried within a small bushland area behind an industrial factory area of boronia/knox.
Often the track where MAC Cycles challenged Pegasus Cycles during various club championships.
As of 2007, this track is still in place, although now partially a sheep trail, it is still very usable, and brought back a lot of memories from the 80's when i last visited there.
Go and visit the track yourself, located in the reserve off Wadhurst Drive, Boronia, Melways 64-D11. 
The access from Wadhurst Drive is via a small clearway between 2 factories, it is shown on the melways map as the narrow entry to a larger reserve.
This was also later known as the "Knox" track, until Knox Club relocated to Knox Park (Bunjil Way) where it still runs today.

Koonung Creek BMX Track ( Blackburn North - Public Track. )
The Koonung Rd BMX track was located at the bottom end of Koonung Rd, Just behind the scout hall, Blackburn North, Melways 48-A5. This was simply a public riding track and never used for official racing or club meets.

The Koonung Track was created from the efforts of my dad, who often hassled our local council to provide a BMX track for all the kids to ride on, since Blackburn North, Doncaster East & Box Hill North, several 1000's of kids had BMX bikes and nowhere to ride.
Finally approaching school holidays, the council came and dumped a zillion truckloads of dirt to build our track.
The council provided tractors and bulldozers to form our track just in time for the school holiday break.

I remember the first day it was completed, i rode to the track with a few mates, and there must have been 200+ BMXers all over the track like ants, it was totally insane, we could hardly ride anywhere without slowing down and making way for all the kids everywhere..... this took a few weeks to calm down.  Once the crowd had thinned out and the surface was heavily pounded down by all the riding, we then had some awesome fun jumping and racing eachother....finally we could ride the track at full-tilt speeds ;-)

Approx 1 year later, the track became rundown and filled with potholes and weather damage, so we hassled the council a 2nd time, also receiving truckloads of dirt and bulldozers to rennovate the track a 2nd time. At this stage, being a freshly surfaced track, and long enough, it was 'considered' to become an NBA club track until the Eram Park was built sometime later in Box Hill North.

I remember after 1984-85 the Koonung track was rarely ridden on, and grass took over, to hide an almost stoney sheeptrail of a riding track.
Several years ago, the entire area had become buried underneath the Doncaster Freeway extension, that extended the Freeway from Doncaster along to join into Springvale Road, Nunwading.

The Koonung track is nothing but good memories now . . .

Eram Park BMX Track ( Box Hill North - Pegasus Cycles & NBA Club Track )
The Eram Park track was located off Tram Road (Station St), Box Hill North, Melways 47-E3.
Access to this reserve was via Tram Rd, or Eram Rd (at other end).
I remember this started as public riding track, but soon became an offical NBA racing track.
( i'm not exactly sure if it's original intention was to build an eastern suburbs NBA track or not).

This track was built almost 2 years after the Koonung track was built, i simply recall meeting some guys at our Koonung track one day, and they asked if we'd been to the Eram Park track yet.
We had no idea about it, never heard of it, so off we went cuising along the Koonung Creek bike trail towards Box Hill North... I remember being 500metres from the track and thinking "that's a big crowd, what's going on"

We got to the starting hill, looking around and couldnt understand why there were so many damn people here.
It took us almost 30 mins to walk up the starting hill, waiting for our turn to ride....this was beyond insane!

I thought our koonung track opening week was huge, but the Eram park 1st week had something closer to 500 riders all over it........think about it for a second, some of todays race meets dont get 500 riders...... I remember we started jumping over the starting hill (launch off one side, land down other side), because the track was just too packed to try and ride on....i recall the surface being powdery and dusty, which really slowed us down.

It took a while for the riders to get over the new track, and once again the crowd thinned down to a point where there might be 50-100 riders daily afterschool cruising on the track.
The shape of the track was unique and had a lot more jumps and challenges than our Koonung track, so Eram park became our new daily hangout for riding.....and Koonung was just a place to ride if we couldnt be bothered riding to Eram Park.
.
I'm not sure how long it was before racing officially started at Eram Park, but i think i rode EVERY meet that was ever held there, it became my home track, my training track, and became a track i was soon unbeatable on.
Since the racing was held under the NBA sanction, i had to become an NBA member to be able to race there.
After that, i started attending all the NBA meets at other tracks too...but that's another story.

I never really visited the track after 1983, so i don't know how much longer it ran races, or when it became another rundown BMX track (like Koonung). I do recall driving along Tram Road in later years and seeing the track surrounded in grass and weeds, looked like
no-one had ridden it for a while and the scene was dead.

Several years ago, the entire area had become buried underneath the Doncaster Freeway extension, and the remaining area of Eram park had been lanscaped into walking paths etc.
Since Eram Park was along the Koonung Creek-line, it is the same path that the new Doncaster Freeway extension followed towards the koonung track in Blackburn North, and then along to join into Springvale Road, Nunwading.

The Eram Park track is nothing but good memories now.

Middleborough Rd Track & Jumps ( Doncaster East - Dirt trail & Jumps )
It was located in Brindy Reserve, off Brindy Cresent, Doncaster east, Melways 47-J3.
Access was via Brindy Crescent, thru an empty lot between the 2 houses (numbers 29 & 31) and also accessable via the Koonung creek trail.

In the late 70's this was just a simple sheeptrail style track through some dense bushlands.
The trail had always been there, from as early as 1975-80 when i used to ride with mates through there on our dragsters in the mud.
Sometime around 1980-81 this trail started to come to life again when some of the older local riders ( Jamie Hales, Barry Dever, Shaun McEvoy, Dave Kennedy ) decided to refine the track with shovels, adding a few rad jumps and berms here'n'there.

A year or so later, myself and a few mates also took shovel and axe to refine the track, extending it much longer and zig-zagged it's way around trees, through bushes until reaching down towards the bottom next to the creek.

The beauty of this track was that you started at the top of a hill, and it swept through various smaller hills & humps as well as zig-zagging down towards the end, you rarely had to pedal to maintain speed, and i'd have to point out that this was the earliest form of "trails" and "rythm sections" that you see today.

This area never seemed to die off, everytime i rode past there many years later i always saw someone jumping or digging up something to remake an old trail that once was.
In recent years 2000-2003 i rode out there to see if it was still there, only to find that there were about 100 jumps, twin packs, 4 packs, rythm sections and everything else imaginable.
Looks like the young locals of today have totally transformed our 70's trail into an extreme sports site...unbelievable !

I met some locals there and talked about it with them, they bragged how they created "this place" and i had to correct them by stating that i was among the earlier 'pioneers' of that area.
They didnt believe me, and insisted their older brothers 'created' this area in the 90's....... So, a few days later i went back with some photo's of myself and mates jumping in that very area, the photo's were dated between 1979 and 1982 on the back...
The guys totally freaked out and instantly announced me with "legend" status amongst their crew.....gee whiz !!!

A few years ago i visited that area again, and found all the jumps were flattened, and the whole area fenced off. I met some of the locals i knew earlier and they told me the story that the council had closed it down, as a lady was walking her dog one night through the reserve and fell down one of the holes between the jumps. It's in the councils best interest to avoid lawsuits due to dangerous conditions on crown land ;-)

In 2007 i've just re-visited the area again, and it's still fenced off by council........
There's 2-3 narrow tracks between the fencing you can ride along etc, and new trees planted in the way of every 'possible' jump, leaving nothing radical to jump off anymore.

Dust Bowl ( Blackburn Lake - Dirt trail & Jumps )
The Dust Bowl was located on Lake Road, Blackburn, within the Blackburn Lake Parklands, Melways 48-C12.

It was called the Dust Bowl due to it's shape, it would be best to describe it as a crater (or bowl) in the ground.
I recall it being as much as 8-10feet deep and maybe 20 feet across. It was the equivelant of a concrete skatepark.

Riders would sit around the edge of the bowl, and take turns to ride in on the down ramp, gain heaps of speed, and then launch out of the opposite side. There were several launch ramps around most of the bowl, so riders were flying in all directions at any given moment.
There were always collisions inside the bowl when 2 riders impatiently tried to sneak in a jump, and failed.

If you've seen the motorcross "dome" where 2-3 bikes ride around inside, then you can imagine the "DustBowl".

I had visited the Dustbowl a few years ago, only finding a very shallow landscaped area that remotely resembled a dish ;-)
  

The Ant-Hills ( Box Hill North - Dirt trail & Jumps )
The "Ant-Hills" was another area alongside Koonung creek in Box Hill North.
This was just over Tram Road from the Eram Park BMX track, Melways 47-D4.
Access was usually via Tram Road, along the gravel bike path which soon led you straight into the main Ant-Hill area.
Why the Ant-Hills? because there were several steep humps back-to-back like Ant-Hills.....simple huh?

There was a small trail alongside the creek that had a few dip-jumps, then from there you'd head downward into a larger open "arena",
where there were assorted jumps and mounds to get rad on.

It was just something different from conventional BMX tracks, and loads of people got great air and style at the Anthills. 
 

Leeds St Jump ( Doncaster East - Big Dirt Jump )
The Leeds St Jump was known by all Blackburn North-Box Hill-Doncaster East riders as the biggest jump in the area.
Located just behind the Scout Hall and the bottom end of Leeds St, Doncaster East, Melways 47-K4.
It's actually still there, just a little grassy and i think there's now some logs lining the scout-hall carpark that prevent it being used anymore.

Why all the fuss? it was only 1 jump!
It was an excellent jump, with a HUGE starting hill leading down towards it, you couldn't help but to launch 10feet high & 30 feet long air from it.
We worked on it constantly, always taking shovels along, and working on the lip, or burying another tree-log inside the jump to give it extra lip and longevity.

The main advantage was that it was on the same trail when you travelled from Koonung track towards Eram Park or the Anthills....
Either way, you ALWAYS jumped at Leeds St on your way passing through there.