The People Behind the Gear

We’re Nick and Emily — the owners and operators of Outsports Hiking Hire.

We purchased Outsports in 2025 and, between us and our team, we’ve spent much of our working lives on the other side of this — running programs, leading groups, and sorting gear the week before a camp. We know how challenging the job can be because we’ve lived it ourselves.

Nick has degrees in outdoor recreation and business, alongside experience leading in the field with schools and camps. He’s the gear freak of the family, and has often been known to bore people with the nuances of sleeping bag construction and knot-tying. He’ll use any excuse to get outside and put new equipment through its paces.

Emily is the creative mind of the family and the driving force behind our operations team — the one who steps back and sees where everything fits. She’s run her own business and worked in adventure camps and education, and her time now goes to Outsports and our young family.

Outsports Hiking Hire has been supplying the Australian outdoor education and adventure industry since 1981. For most of that time it ran as a retail shop as well as a hire business. Over recent years it has focused on the part that was developed over the last 40+ years: hiring the equipment we know and trust to groups across Victoria.

The founders ran it for more than forty years. When they retired in 2025 they were very particular about who they would sell to — they wanted it run the way they’d built it: service you can rely on, equipment that’s genuinely maintained, and being easy to deal with. Since we’ve taken over, we’ve made it our mission to uphold, and improve on, those original non-negotiables.

Outsports Hiking Hire is Australian-owned and family-run. The people you talk to are the people who own it.