February 27th 2021 marked one year of Outdoor Access officially being in business and what a great feeling that was.
We could go on and say what a difficult year due to the global pandemic but lets face it we were going to launch this business anyway!
Just lucky we put the pressure on ourselves to launch by end of February as it was really only a month later and the world had changed with this new word called lockdowns.
For us this has been a massive under taking and a big learning curve which started two years prior to our launch date in February 2020.
Nigel, Bruce and myself all have a passion for the outdoors and this is kind of how we met. Bruce and Nigel are old school friends who are partners in crime when it comes to Jet-boating and have been a successful Jet-boat marathon driver/ navigator combo for many years. I met Nigel through a place we both worked for a short while, where we started talking about our weekend trips on the rivers on a Monday morning. This drove the discussion about how frustrating it was getting to your favourite spot only to find the weather was bad or the river was flooded. This is where it all began, sounds easy doesn’t it - lets do it!
We started planning and kept a clear vision of “what we as passionate recreational users would want” and help us with our regular trips on the river. It was clear, we need quality cameras, a great website and the other available data online all in one spot such as river mouth tides, local weather and river flow data. For us the camera was the most important part of our setup. It had to be excellent quality and it had to be real time live-streamed video. We didn’t want hourly snap shots and low resolution images. As you know a lot can happen with the weather in an hour so it had to be something that hasn’t been done before.
So this was the journey we embarked on and as above this hadn’t been done before so we quickly found out how much of a challenge this was going to be to get the right system and one that worked in remote locations. Nigel, Bruce and myself kept each other on track and just reminded ourselves lets do one thing a week each with the thought process after 4 weeks we'll be further ahead than doing nothing at all. By the first year we were getting somewhere - we had our business plan sorted, our locations, our plans to install on 10,000 rivers then came the technology side….. We knew nothing! Man did we know nothing! This next phase of getting the right technology, different bits needing different bits, Part A doesn’t like Part B, but Part Z matches Part F, this was a long process and again something that seemed so simple got tough really quick but we knew, it wasn’t impossible!
Come September 2019 we were now really getting somewhere. We had the prototype setup installed at my place - we could now physically see our vision come to life and see how this is going to look and perform. There were still some teething issues and even some major improvements to the pole design which was only for the better. But early in January we were ready to setup our first ever site on the Ashburton River mouth.
This project has been a massive learning curve for us. It has been extremely enjoyable and the support behind us from every person involved in the setup has had a major influence on getting this dream off the ground and actually functioning as you see it today.
The three of us still work full time at the day job but spend our mornings, nights & weekends running this business. It's full on, but when you have a passion for the outdoors there is no question about doing it.
We have a strong vision and determination to add more cameras so you can view your favourite location from our site.
This was built by fishermen, jet boaters and hunters, for fishermen, jet boaters and hunters.
Which is us!
We thank you for your support shown to us in the last 12 months it is truly incredible and appreciated by the three of us.
Spread the word and help us add more cameras on your favourite water-ways.
Thanks,
Brett, Nigel & Bruce.
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