Alpine Shire Council will continue to see if there are other feasible options to provide complete public access to the Wandi Walk, linking Bright to Wandilgong.
Councillors last week received a report which established there is no public right of way across two freehold properties on White Star Road in Wandiligong, where the trail now crosses due to Morses Creek changing course.
While councillors accepted it is unlikely complete public access to the trail will be re-established there, they also agreed to continue to investigate the feasibility of bypassing the freehold land, to maintain the Wandi Walk as a continuous walking trail linking Bright (from Centenary Park) to Wandiligong.
“I would like to reassure residents, as councillors and council officers, we will continue to investigate the ability to maintain the Wandi Walk as a continuous trail,” Cr Jean-Pierre Ronco said.
“We are all for it.”
Latest Stories
Alpine Shire Mayor, Cr Sarah Nicholas, said she wished to elaborate on Cr Ronco’s comment and asked council’s director of assets, Alan Rees, about potential ways forward.
“The first step is to do a boundary establishment survey, to understand exactly where private and crown land boundaries are,” Mr Rees said.
“Then it would be a matter of assessing opportunities to create crossing-points, perhaps on the upstream and downstream sides of the private land.
“There are some other things we will explore, to see what access we can provide or enable for the community.
“But any crossing points would involve bridges, which would then need to be looked at from a funding perspective and those would be subject to future budget processes and project pipeline discussions.”
Alpine Shire CEO, Will Jeremy, further clarified that despite the recommendation to continue to look for a way to establish the Wandi Walk as a continuous walking trail, it was not at this stage the intention of officers to continue exploring the opportunity to access across the freehold land identified.
“To make it clear; we’re drawing a line [through] the opportunity to access across the freehold land and we’re looking at ways to bypass that freehold land on either side, in order to maintain the trail,” Mr Jeremy said.
Councillors then voted unanimously to carry the motion, initially put forth by Cr Ronco and seconded by Cr Noah Tanzen.
