Officer Mountain Board Park

February 3, 2019 Dylan Warren

BEACONSFIELD MOUNTAINBOARDERS will finally have a home after Cardinia Shire Council approved the Masterplan for the Officer District Park at their last General Meeting.

Councillor Brett Owen said the “exciting reserve” will sit atop the “highest point in the residential part of Officer” on Skyline Drive in the Grandvue Estate and will be large enough to host regional mountainboarding, skateboarding and BMX events.

“It’s attracting older children and teenagers, I think that’s great; there’s probably a current gap at the moment for that sort of thing”, Cr Owen said.

“We’ve got small parks around the shire but to have a regional type skate park is really exciting”.

He also said the Council has received “overwhelmingly positive” feedback from community consultation.

Cr Owen said the estimated cost of the park is $5M and Council have applied for a $2M grant via the Australian Government’s Building Better Regions Fund.

Cr Owen said, if Council is successful, this money would be “a very good start”.

“It would do a fair share of what we’re proposing to do on the masterplan”, he said.

He said while the remainder would likely be funded by general rate revenue, Council is always looking for other grant opportunities.

Cr Owen hopes the park will be completed in 5 years, inclusive of the current budget discussions.

Professional Mountainboarder, Dylan Warren said they have been petitioning Council for a facility for two years.

However, Cr Owen said finding a site with the right topography had proved difficult.

Dylan from Australian Mountainboarders said, “We’re trying to build a community and introduce kids in the area to mountainboarding. We also try to promote outdoor lifestyles and putting aside their PlayStations”.

Together with the not-for-profit Victorian Mountainboarders, Australian Mountainboarders offer free workshops for kids.

But Dylan said the lack of a facility in the area had been a problem.

“There wasn’t a facility in the area where the kids could go after school and ride on the weekends and really build that community like they do at a skatepark”, he said.

“The missing piece in the puzzle was that these kids were getting into the sport, but they had nowhere to ride”.

Dylan said mountainboarding also attracts snowboarders looking to practice in the summer or skateboarders who want to ride different terrain.

“Eventually, when the park is built then we’ll have a home for Mountainboarding and a world-class facility in Cardinia”, he said.

“We’ll be able to grow and introduce more kids to the sport we love so much”.

Australian Mountainboarders: https://ausmountainboarders.com/
Location of the reserve (Google Maps):

https://www.google.com/maps/@-38.061209,145.428899,18z?hl=en-GB

References

Cardinia Shire Council 2019, ‘Council meetings – agendas and minutes’, retrieved 7 January 2019, <https://www.cardinia.vic.gov.au/meetings>.

Cardinia Shire Council 2019, ‘Council meetings - Cardinia Shire Council’, accessed 7 January 2019, <https://www.cardinia.vic.gov.au/info/20007/your_shire_and_council/117/council_meetings#section-3-watch-the-most-recent-council-meeting-online--monday-10-december>.

Words: Deanna Vonic
Photo: Craig Hallihan
https://dhvonic.wordpress.com/

Ace-Hi Mountain Board camp

January 22, 2019 Dylan Warren

Man we love to teach people how to Mountain Board! It was all very exciting when the 14th of Jan rolled around because that was the start of our week long Mountainboard camp!

  Ace Hi Ranch hosted this years camp (the same place we are building a Mountainboard Park). 20 girls and 2 boys had booked in to our first camp of 2019. Alongside Mountainboarding campers get to experience; horse riding, The Big Swing, zip-lines, The Amazing Race, Ninja warrior and much much more.

  Set for the best week ever the campers were admittedly a bit nervous for their first Mountainboard Lesson. Worried about falling off and walking back hill. 10 minutes into the first lessons the campers slowly started getting the hang of Mountainboarding. Realizing that Mountainboarding was similar to skateboarding, it slowly became familiar. After learning the basics of riding down the hill a few times, the team was becoming more and more confident. Asking for more challengers, the campers slowly made there way up the hill and by the end of the first lesson everybody had figured out how to ride their boards smoothly and safely. Carving down the grass slope with knees nice and bent they had demolished all fears of riding the All-Terrain boards and had already found a new sense of confidence in them selves. It was truly rewarding seeing the kids progress in just an hour and be so pumped for more by the end.   They were disappointed to find out they had to wait a whole day to do it all again.

Wednesday rolled around and there was a new attitude amongst the riders. They were super excited to get back up on the hill. The riders ran up the hill and strapped in and immediately started riding, just like they had never stopped. The next two days we focused on style and control and tried some new tracks. The brave tried some of the Boarder Cross track getting some dirt under they’re boards, and boy did we see some smiles after that! We even had some of the teams start experimenting with the jumps and some event nailed it on just their third lesson!  After a big week of Mountainboarding, Horse riding, Barn disco’s and much more the campers had made new friendships and found a new favorite sport.

Sad to go home the kids where super stoked to give it their all in their final Mountain Board lesson. We saw massive progression in this lessons. The riders where trying new lines down the hill, overcoming new challenges and learned many new skills. My personal highlight was seeing so many of the team hit the wooden kickers and some even taking their new skills to the bigger jumps. Many of the campers said they can’t wait to come back to Ace Hi to ride the park when its open.   Camp was so much fun!! I can’t recommend it highly enough.

We will be taking bookings for next terms camp. So make sure you send us an email ausmountainboarders@gmail.com to reserve your place!   If you would like to see more from camp I did a live video on our Facebook Page which you can view here and I have posted some photos on our Instagram page here.

  Thanks to all of this terms campers for riding with me and I can’t wait to see you all again on the hill very soon!

  Dylan Warren

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Mountainboard Event Entertainment - City of Sydney

November 20, 2018 Dylan Warren

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DAY 1 – FRIDAY:

At what felt like the crack of dawn, with coffees and vegan treats in hand, Dylan and Bec pick me up. We’re all honestly surprised we hadn’t bumped into my neighbor, and fellow mountain boarder, Tom Pianta. Even after repeated attempts at shouting at his window. Rocks were next.

The three of us pile into the ute, packed and blasting The Black Eyed Peas (DJ Dylan’s doing), we head off to Sydney Gundagai. Why Gundagai? Because there’s a dog, and get this, he’s sitting on a tuckerbox. There’s a bloody Dog on a Tuckerbox. What’s not to love? You have to see it to believe it.

That’s pretty much the highlight of the drive from Melbourne to Sydney. There’s not much else really. Road. Bush. Roadkill. Dog on a Tuckerbox. Road. Farm. Roadkill.

We link up with legends Craig Hallihan and Daniel Packer as we get into Sydney and stay in a town called Lidcombe. There’s a few things that we would come to learn about Lidcome during our trip:

1) They have cheap beers ($8 longnecks howyagoing)

2) There’s amazing Korean food

3) They don’t know what vegetarian means

4) Half the town is a practically taken up by a Catholic Club’s carpark

DAY 2 – SATURDAY:

After we all struggle with our bipolar shower, we make tracks for The Big Adventure at Sydney Park. The Big Adventure is a massive family event jam packed with a day of activities to encourage people to go outside and exercise. Activities on the day include rockclimbing, parkour classes, yoga, AFL and NRL clinics, and of course the main attraction, mountain boarding demos and learn to ride workshops. We had a huge day ahead of us with circa 7 demos and 14 learn to ride lessons. Cactus Formo and UK import Sam Penny met us at the park for the big day.

The Big Adventure had placed us on a great hill for beginners to learn how to mountain board; one side with a mellow gradient, the other with a natural bowl/halfpipe perfect for progressing riders. Our demo set up consisted of a small roll in, roller, leading to a super fun kicker.

Everyone on the day rode incredibly well! Sam Penny wowed the crowd with some no comply three sixties off the kickers, whilst Dylan ended each demo with a bang, back and front flipping his way to end the show. Each demo was followed by two learn to ride workshops, and tell you what, the kids nearly stole the show from the pros! We were utterly impressed as kids (and some adults) who have never stepped foot on any kind of board before, let alone a mountain board, picked it up straight away. By the end of each workshop there were riders tearing up the steeper bowl section of the hill, and some where keen enough to shred the mini ramps with heaps of style. We taught over 160 people how to Mountainboard!!

DAY 3 – SUNDAY:

No rest for the wicked; another big day for the crew. Plan for the day: meet up with a Brazilian Mountain boarder Italo Guimaraes Dos Santos some dirt jumps, go watch the X Games finals, hit a street spot, and skate the new Sydenham skatepark. The dirt jumps were small but super fun to session. A massive storm from the day before hindered us from riding the big line. We’ll definitely be back.

The X Games were nothing short of awe inspiring. Our seats gave us front and centre views of skateboardings’ heavy hitters with the likes of Nyjah Houston, Shane O’Neill, Luan Oliveira, Ryan Decenzo, and Tommy Fynn.

We then headed to a street spot where I was able to land a pop over ollie of a car park drop. To wrap up the day we checked out the new Sydenham skate park. The park is really well thought out with skateboarders in mind. Probably the most unique feature of the park is its location; directly under the flightpath of planes landing at Sydney Airport.

DAY 4 – SUNDAY:

I’ll close off this blog with one of the best and most elaborate dad jokes I’ve ever heard, courtesy of an Aussie larrikin we met the tiny country town of Chiltern.

Some back story for you international folk: Australia has been gripped in a crisis where someone has been putting needles into strawberries and other fruit. Anyway:

Old larrikin: “You’ve heard about the crisis involving needles and strawberries, yeah? Well, it’s really effecting our town: farmers are losing income and local stores aren’t busy because the farmers have no money to spend. What’s worse is that all the haybales that have been donated to them have been burnt by authorities in case that’s where the needles are coming from.”

Us: “That’s horrible”

Old Larry: “Yeah, all those haybales burnt. To find the needle in the haystack”

Words by Eddy Kusdiana

Photos by Eddy Kusdiana and Bec Lazarowicz

Video by Dylan Warren

Please LIKE this post and COMMENT below and let us know what you thought of this weeks blog :)

Ace-Hi Opening Day

October 31, 2018 Dylan Warren

If you have been following our socials for the past couple of months you would know we have been building Melbourne’s first Mountainboard Park!

Ace-Hi is the name of the camp and at the beginning of every summer they host their annual ‘Opening Day’. The Opening day is a place to experience camp and check out all the activities the camp has to offer. We are very excited to announce that Mountainboarding will be apart of the camp program for 2019!!

We loaded up the ‘Mobile Mountain Mega’ and headed down to the Peninsula. We set up the tower and were ready for show time. We did a longer show then normal and drew a massive crowd.. people sitting on the hill, people sitting on the track, kids climbed up on the railing that surrounded the areana. They were stoked! Either side of the show, we taught lessons. After spendng hours and hours digging on the hill It was really nice to see the entire slope literally covered in people riding Mountainboards. We taught over 150 people how to Mountainboard that day and introduced the sport to many people who I believe will come back and ride at the camp in the near future (when it’s eventually open to the public).

The following week we taught a further two lessons as a part of the camps holiday program. We had a great turn out for both sessions and are pumped for things to come! If we taught you or your kids or you are just a fan our of our show, please leave us a review on both Facebook and Google. It really helps us!!

Google:
https://goo.gl/maps/umsBGnBHdJm

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/ausmountainboarders/

We are hoping to have the Mountainboard Park open in the next few months. In the mean time should we have another event? Let us know in the comments below… We are just wrapping up the boardercross section as we speak. Today I was actually smacking in the last bits of dirt into the last feature. Make sure you check out this weeks episode of Mountainboard Park Construction series on our YouTube channel by the amazing Aaron Petty below:

Instagram:
www.instagram.com/ausmountainboarders

Facebook
www.facebook.com/ausmountainboarders

Be the change you want to see in this world.

- Dylan Warren

Photos by Aaron Petty and Jacob Vinall

Moutainboarding Blog

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References