Peter Fisher in the Yarck Bikes workshop. Peter’s longstanding love of road racing and interest in bicycle mechanics have seen him and wife Jenny return to running a bike services business after a break of two decades.
by Emily Friedel
P
eter and Jenny Fisher were the Murrindindi Shire area’s go-to people for bicycle sales and repairs in the 90s. Back then, they owned Newtech Cycles in Alexandra. Now, after a couple of decades of doing other things, they are once again proprietors of the area’s sole bicycle business: Yarck Bikes. Regardless of what they have been up to business-wise, bikes have been a constant in Peter’s and Jenny’s lives for a long time. Jenny’s dad convinced Peter to have a crack at road racing in the mid-80s, which led to him competing in state and national events. As he racked up the kilometres, Peter’s interest in bikes and ability to work with them grew. “I took it seriously for a while and rode at a pretty high level. I took a coach on and kept a diary for a couple of years, and I was averaging something like 35,000 k’s a year racing and training,” he says.
“Once you start getting heavily into competition, it’s all about maintaining your own gear. And I’ve got a bit of a mechanical background, so there was no problem in seeing how things ticked.” Jenny, on the other hand, opted to ride bikes for pleasure and be part of the support crew, keeping Peter and his teammates well looked after – “It was lots of fun,” she says. Peter also spent a couple of seasons working as a bicycle mechanic for the Sportscover pro-team and rubbed shoulders with some of the big names in cycling. “We had the likes of Barcelona Olympian Robert Crowe on the team. I got to meet Olympian and Commonwealth Games champion Kathy Watt too; she signed [a] poster for me. Mechanicing and supporting a team with some pretty decent riders was probably a bit of a wish come true,” he says. Peter’s love of racing and talent for mechanics, along with the obvious
market gap for bike services in the area, led to the Fishers opening Newtech Cycles in 1993. Almost a quarter of a century later, similar factors led to the opening of Yarck Bikes in January last year. Although Peter doesn’t race anymore, he still rides for fun and thoroughly enjoys tinkering with bikes. After Newtech closed, no one else filled the bicycle market gap. So Peter and Jenny have again taken that niche with Yarck Bikes, offering repairs, sales, and custom bike builds. And despite the extended break, there has been some continuity in their bike work. “We’ve even serviced some of the bikes we sold 24-odd years ago. People have come back saying, ‘We bought our first bike from you!’” Jenny says. While some things haven’t changed since their Newtech days, bike technology has - dramatically. In particular, the advent of e-bikes (electric bikes) has revolutionised how bicycle Murrindindi Guide – AUTUMN 2022 – 23
