‘20 years ago, you couldn’t hire a kayak on the river’. Now, this river business is booming

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In 2004, armed with a few kayaks, John Sharpe set up a business on the banks of the Brisbane River that is still as popular as ever today.

He’d been spending a lot of time around it, working in Kangaroo Point for six years while helping to found and build the Story Bridge Adventure Climb, now one of the city’s premier tourist attractions.

With a keen sense for capitalising on Brisbane’s weather and natural ecology, armed with a few kayaks, Sharpe got to work setting up an adventure business from the old Naval Stores at Kangaroo Point on the banks of the river.“The lord mayor at the time was Campbell Newman and the opposition leader was David Hinchliffe. You couldn’t really get anything done unless you had bipartisan support because Hinchcliffe had the majority.

Sharpe was granted 12 months to make it work, and with the business celebrating its 20-year anniversary this September, it’s clearly been a success.“From the very first moment we took those kayaks down the river back, it’s been the ride of a“Twenty years ago, you couldn’t even hire a kayak on the river, let alone abseil Kangaroo Point’s iconic cliffs.

“And when we take people the other way, up towards South Bank, you’ve got all the bridges and the colours of the casino and the ferris wheel to look at.”

 

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