HE didn't realise it at the time, but Mat Rowland found his calling at the age of eight.
Growing up in country Victoria with a BMX as his trusty steed for the 16km round trip from home to school, he would vanish into nature on the weekends.
"I would head into the bush with my shovel and build my own trails because they didn't exist back then," he recalls. "There were a lot of old gold mines in the area so there were lots of tailings, and mounds of dirt."
Mr Rowland left school early and worked with his electrician dad at length before meeting his Novocastrian wife, Alison, and moving to the Hunter in 1998.
He worked in the electrical and building industry and was a stay-at-home dad for a stretch. He also competed in down hill mountain biking until 2015, when he seriously injured his shoulder.
Mr Rowland was inspired to create his business East Coast Mountain Trails (ECMT) in 2019 on the heels of a travel trip to Canada, New Zealand and Tasmania.
"Just seeing the [mountain bike] trails they had made and were building was inspiring, it opened my eyes to how NSW or my local trails could be better," the father-of-three says.
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"The features and the lengths of trails and how they were constructed were so much better and more sustainable and more weather resistant."
ECMT has worked on projects including the newly opened Barrington Bike Park at Gloucester, an 18-month project entailing the construction of 12 tracks of varying difficulty, and Dungog Common. Both large-scale projects have reinvigorated their communities.
Factors to consider when making a trail sustainable are drainage, materials used to ensure trail endurabilty, and design, to ensure functionality. The Barrington project was a unique challenge.
"It's hard to image where the trails are because it's so inaccessible. We were spending days winching rocks with big heavy chains and winchers to build the trail, so it was technically pretty extreme," Mr Rowland said.
With its customer base split between government and private contracts, ECMT designs and builds trails after wide consultation.
Design considerations include what the user group is, terrain and drainage.
"You can overcome obstacles and shape the ground to make the trail the best possible way - there is probably no perfect block of land or site, you get given an area and you have to make it the best you can," he says.
Mr Rowland says the most rewarding part of his job is seeing the smiles on faces at the bottom of a trail his team has built.
He says mountain trail bike riding is the fastest growing action sport in the world for good reason.
"It is incredibly accessible for a lot of people, most people ride bikes. You lose yourself in the outdoors and you get kids engaged with the outdoors and off the couch - a lot of families are trying to get them out and doing stuff," he says.
Living near Glenrock, he says Newcastle is crying out for a proper mountain trail space, with most enthusiasts forced to travel to Dungog or Awaba to ride.
"It needs to happen, the demand is there," he says.
"Finding the spot to build it is the trickiest thing, Mount Sugarloaf is an obvious one."
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An in-depth story on the new Barrington Bike Park will feature as the cover story of Weekender on September 17
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