Solar/Battery installation:
Cairns Mountain Bike Club is grateful to announce that the Cairns Regional Council has provided a small grant through the Community Sustainability Grant program to assist with around half the cost of installing new Lithium solar battery to the Club building. The initial battery system was donated as a retired test system from Ergon’s battery lab. As the site has no mains power, and it would be very costly to get mains power, over time the battery system has passed its design life and failed.
The new lithium battery will provide a greater capacity and a 10 year warranty. The toilets and security lighting should all be fully functional in February 2023.
Economic Impact of Mountain Biking to Cairns :
Cairns MTB Club applies for a number of grants every year. These grants are for all sorts of things, especially new trails, and are for the benefit of the entire community. Over time, the ability to ‘win’ these grants have become more competitive and harder. One area that comes up regularly is how the grant will provide financial returns and/or how many people it will employ. Without undertaking specialist research, answering these questions is very hard.
The Club was successful in obtaining a grant from Cairns Regional Council to undertake a study into the Economic impact of Mountain Biking to Cairns. Council funded around 80% of the report costs and the timing meant that the researcher was able to attend Crankworx as part of the project, gaining valuable international and interstate contributions. The report was recently completed by AEC.
Some of the key findings include:
- Current positive economic impacts of around $35m and 206 Jobs for the Cairns economy
- AEC compares Cairns and Rotorua favourably
- Rotorua generates around $140m economic impact from MTB-ing, about $100m from tourists whose main purpose is MTB tourism.
- To become a national/international destination, Cairns is about 50kms of trails short of the mark.
- 80/20 participation males to females with female growth in the sport of about 5% in 5 years
- Annual growth of the sport of about 5.4% annually
- The highest number of Participants are aged between 35-54 years old and generally have high household incomes. This means Cairns may have an untapped wealthy tourism cohort to target in the future.
Cairns Mountain Bike Club would like to acknowledge and thank Council for its support. The Club is sure that the report will assist future funding grant requests.
