I have been involved in computers pretty much all my life dating back to the Commodore’s but I never thought of it as a career choice, it was always a fun hobby until my friend Ben showed up one day whilst I was building a new gaming computer. At the time I was in my 20’s and working in a dirty laborious job in Orange NSW. He asked what the hell I was doing eating dirt for ALS when I had this skill set and suggested I go put an application in at the computer store he worked at.. The penny finally dropped and I got that job, going on to complete a Certificate IV via TAFE NSW, Trained with Toshiba and did official warranty work for them and the same for Apple. Thing were great but the town of Orange and I grew apart, it was not for me up there. I found myself missing the place I called home, Canowindra. Moving back here was the best move ever, I felt relaxed again and happy. Canowindra locals will know what I mean, it’s great to travel but nothing compares to coming back home to Canowindra. However with the long drive to work in Orange, an hour there and an hour home each day on dodgy car destroying roads.. it made things hard and I had to quit my dream job and sorely missed IT afterwards.

My besties at Canowindra Bakery suggested I open my own store here in Canowindra and offered me their old bakery shopfront which was not being used apart from personal storage. I got in touch with Verto who recommended “New Enterprise Incentive Scheme” So I hooked up with that, it was a lot of work but very helpful for starting my business. I got through NEIS giving me a wealth of knowledge, confidence and a small business cert plus a kickstart to get my business off the ground and thus on the 13^th of December 2013 Duck IT’s doors opened for the first time after a very cheeky advertising campaign that had everyone talking 😉 Knowing how small towns work I sent out a flier to every home in Canowindra giving very little information but letting them know that I would see them all very, very soon! This got people talking, “Who is Duckie?” “What does Duckie do?” “When will We see Duckie?” “I think this….” Gossip was red hot and it was all about me and only a very select tight lipped few knew the answer! The gossip got that hot that even the local paper was asking in their pages “Would the real Duckie please stand up!?” So for a fraction over $100 I had the best advertisement campaign in history for very minimal effort and got alot of laughs along the way!

A lot of time has passed since then and Duck IT has seen and weathered many things, we have been through floods with one sending my shop 2 inches under water when drainage on Blatchford St/Gaskill St full failed! We have been through drought and back through floods again. Covid19 was by far our biggest challenge and to survive we had to completely change how we did business turning to doors closed appointment only I bunkered down and did what I could to keep Duck IT alive whilst servicing computers for people who were forced to work from home as well as helping other businesses and companies change the way that they did business so that they could also survive. Some things died through Covid and somethings adapted and became stronger, Duck IT is in the later. Getting ready for re-opening Duck IT had a full overhaul inside, fresh flooring was laid by our local builder, bright fresh paint in Duck IT’s orange, green and plack was applied to the walls by myself and local friends. All new tech computers were built by me, a brand new card machine from Square now gives me the ability to offer payments by card which we have never had before and in the very near future, Afterpay should be available!! A brand new Canon A3 printer with all the extra’s allows me to once again reliably offer printing services which now include booklet making as the new machine folds, staples, hole punches and even scans large volumes of documents faster than an F1 race car! (well pretty fast anyways!!) New signage for the shop has also been done up. So here we are in 2023 still going despite everything thrown at us and looking forward to a bright future and our 10th birthday in December!