I'm a 45 year old male, married ( 25 years ) with 3 kids, lived in the same place all my life ( Australian North Coast ) and been riding bikes as long as I can remember. Some people have lots of hobbies, I struggle to find the time for one but it has always involved two wheels. When I was twelve I chopped the rear end off my bike and fitted a linkage shock a' la Kawasaki uni track because I thought it would be cool, that's the sort of shit i've been doing all my life.

I can't remember where the urge to race came from but my dad had some photo's of himself when he was younger, posed with these great looking 3 speed derailleur geared bikes they used to race on dirt oval tracks, probably came from there. I was about 13 when I got my first full size wheeled bike and rode it everywhere. We lived about 50 km from the nearest cycle club but my mum was willing to drive me there on Saturday's so I could race. Sometimes I would ride there instead but we have winter road seasons here in Oz, so it was always a struggle to make it home before dark, and besides, I was only a little tacker.

I always loved doing things with my hands, wasn't much of an academic and was destined to be a hands on kind of guy. Started my plumbing apprenticeship at 16 years old doing cottage work, laying drains and silver soldering copper water pipes day in day out, I really enjoyed my job. I was always playing with the oxy after work doing foreign orders, so it was a natural progression to want to build my own bicycle frame. Information about anything cycling was hard to come by in Oz at that time, especially when you lived in a one horse town. My lifeline was international cycling sport magazine that my local newsagent would source for me as a special order. During the tour I would get up for the 6am radio news hoping for a soundbite about how Phil Anderson was doing against that Badger prick.

About 1984 I bought my first 531 tube set from British International Trading ( Oz importers ) and set about constructing my first lugged frameset. I had this book I got from somewhere called " Bicycle Frames" which featured some English and US builders including Tom Kellogg if I remember correctly, I used this book for inspiration. Can't really remember how that frame went but it must have worked OK as I rode it for a few years after. I built a couple of frames a year for mates after that for the next few years but then stopped riding when I discovered girls and Motorbikes.

Fast forward a few years when I was 25 and I decided to start riding and racing again. Steel was losing it's fan base and aluminum was becoming the norm. I stumbled upon a guy named Peter Teschner who was offering hand built Columbus alloy frames. He lived about 2 hours drive away so one day I jumped in the car and paid him a visit, I came home with a few Altec tube sets even though I knew nothing about aluminum. I had a chat to an engineer friend of mine that welded alloy, he gave me a few lessons and I was away again. Along the way I have actually forged a friendship and working relationship with Peter and did some contract work for him including frames for the Australian Institute of Sport with some taking commonwealth and world champ medals. This is something that I was proud to be associated with but also fully aware that the riders would have won medals no matter what they were riding.

I am now building tube to tube carbon, have done around 20 frames with positive results over the past 3 years. I traded in my plumbing tools and opened a retail bike shop about 5 years ago. As you can see, the bike has been at the forefront of my passions for a long time and doesn't look like letting go anytime soon. Thanks for listening and thanks to all those who share their knowledge to others along the way.

Regards
Bill Fernance