https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/11/08/parks-trails-all-terrain-wheelchairs/
and 113 to be quite accurate.
For a long time I have been dreaming of the TrailRider being adopted by the New Zealand Department of Conservation in the way that it has been been adopted by Parks Victoria and finally I have glimpsed the first instance of that coming to pass.
Give or take a bit there are 100 Visitor Centres in Victoria and again, giving or taking a bit, it costs $8000 to buy a TrailRider. So equipping every Visitor Centre with a TrailRider would cost a paltry (ha ha) $800,000. This is not petty cash, even for Parks Victoria.
It is a sum of money that could be raised through crowdfunding though.
It is also quite possible that some of those visitor centres would not have the space or the trained volunteers (this needs a Sherpa Volunteer Program) to accommodate that. So that reduces the sum that would need to be raised.
The exciting thing for me here is the number of TrailRiders that would need to be purchased at this point and the amount of money that would need to be spent. This is the moment I have waited for for a long time because this would be the moment to begin Australian manufacturing. All that is needed is a manufacturer!
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Joanne & Rodney (TrailRider champions) little old me, my wife Ros, my sister Jude and her son who took the photo |