The Queensland section of the world's longest recreation trail was opened yesterday at Kilkeven by Premier Micah Hearn.
The Bicentennial National Trail stretches unbroken through 5000 kilometres of bush from Cooktown in far north Queensland to the outskirts of Melbourne in Victoria.
The Queensland Government's Recreation Council provided substantial administrative and organisational assistance to the National Trail Committee.
The trail will give bush walkers and horse riders access to some of the state's most spectacular scenery.
Well, this Bicentennial National Trail offers horse riders and hikers and in some cases four wheel drive enthusiasts the chance to escape to the great outdoors
and move right down what's equivalent to the Great Dividing Range from Cape York to the New South Wales border.
Old stock routes, bush tracks, fire trails and surveyed roads have been utilised to encounter all terrains from tropical rainforest to dry plains.
The trail has taken some 16 years to develop and its completion has been made possible by the assistance of the Australian Bicentennial Committee.
The opening of the trail is the culmination of a 16 year dream for National Trail Committee Executive Officer Mike Allen
who says that the trail offers tremendous recreational opportunities for Queenslanders in particular.
Tremendous scope in Queensland, essentially the trail's for horse riding and for walking.
But there's other places, for example where the trail follows the Fitzroy River, where that section of river is very popular for canoeists.
Now there's other places that are popular for hang gliding.
The trail has been divided into 12 sections as well as 115 one day trips that can be traversed by either hikers, horse riders, four wheel drive enthusiasts, canoeists or picnickers.
The trail has been designed to enable people to enter and exit at numerous points.
Eventually camping facilities will be available no more than a day's walk or ride apart.
Guidebooks and strip maps are available from the National Trail Committee.
The trail presents some great potential for recreation and tourism by passing through a diversity of beautiful and rugged terrain as well as incorporating some of our nation's historical sites.
It was most fitting that the opening of the trail coincided with Kilkeaven's third annual Great Horse Ride which drew some 500 riders including Minister for Sport Brian Littleproud.
The Queensland Recreation Council has coordinated all this and then 500 horsemen rode into Kilkeaven to celebrate the conclusion of the marking of the trail in Queensland
with a great occasion probably almost equal to the Charge of the Light Horse in Bathsheba back in World War I.