Canefields to ocean to rolling hills: vision splendid of 135km northern NSW rail trail short-changed

Despite the backing of councils in a region in dire need of support, the federal government has rejected a $42m grant request to complete the trail’s 54km missing link Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast There are glow-worms in the old train tunnel if you look hard enough into the deepest, darkest black, Paul Hixon says. The visitor from Brisbane is cycling the Murwillumbah to Crabbes Creek section of the northern rivers rail trail with his two daughters, but today he only plans to make it as far as the Burringbar tunnel. Since the trains stopped running along the rail line, the tunnel – the longest of nine along the route – has been colonised by glow-worms and microbats that are sometimes possible to find, even in the middle of a bright, sunny day. Hixon and his two daughters are hardly the only ones out today. A woman has stopped to read her book along a section of track that runs through thick rainforest; a young couple on a date watch the riders going by. For now, the rail trail exists in two halves, the stretch around the Tweed River area and another stretch in the western hinterland between Casino and Lismore. If the full track gets built, it will be p