Our Marrickville Co-Working Space

When a gap year turned into a gap decade

When a gap year turned into a gap decade, it was safe to say adventure was on the cards. It's been a long time to get here — more late nights than we'd care to remember, climbing crags the world over, waves on every continent and new friends in every city. Be it one night in Lhasa or a lifelong mate met on a balcony in Portland — connections with like-minded people is what we do this for.

Wind back a couple of decades. It's the summer of 2003, the air is dry and hot; the fires had been intense that year and it was a summer to remember. I'd finished my HSC four months earlier, days working as a landscape labourer — nights stacking shelves at the local IGA — all saving up for the big adventure I'd been planning for years. I'd intended to go for a year, maybe a year and a half. Christmas of 2012 I came home.

The Adv. Collective Co-Working space sits above our passion and livelihood — Adventure Merchants & Outfitters and A.M.O. Garage — smack bang in the Inner West of Sydney, not far from our original warehouse in Petersham where we started Bear Rentals, our first project after returning home. We had some spare space, so we thought — why not see if some other like-minded legends might want to work here alongside us?

That's the thing about Adventure Collective. It wasn't born in a boardroom. It was born from a lifestyle — from people who believe that work should fit around your life, not the other way around. We wanted to create the kind of hub where you can smash out a full day's work, then head downstairs and check out the latest campervan build, or grab a whisky from the distillery after hours. Easy. No fuss. Just good people doing good work in a space that actually inspires you.