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  • Australia's best young locksmith 2021 | 1st Finalist



Please provide a short personal biography about yourself.

I was born in Brisbane and attended school here. As I got older I dropped out of high school as I was never a good student! I recall sitting on a friends couch one day when I saw newspaper article about a shortage of tradespeople in Brisbane, one of the trades mentioned was locksmithing.

I signed myself up for the prevocational locksmithing course. Once I attended the first couple of weeks I absolutely fell in love with the industry. I absorbed all the information the TAFE teachers imparted on me.

I struggled to find a company to take me on as an apprentice due to the Brisbane floods of 2011. So, I did what I considered to be the next best thing and got a job at Mister Minit being a Cobbler. I worked there for a couple of years while applying for apprenticeships.

I finished out my apprenticeship at a small business where I was the only locksmith. This had its advantages as I was thrown into the deep end. I feel that this has helped greatly in getting experience in a wide range of locksmithing skills. I worked there for about 5 years.

16 months ago I decided to start my own business as it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. It has its challenges but I am proud to say that even during the Covid-19 pandemic I have been able to serve the public with close to 700 happy customers in that time.

What do you most enjoy about your work as a locksmith?

The constant learning. I don’t think there has been a day in my career when I have not learned something new.

Day to day, my most enjoyable work is the puzzle aspect of locksmithing. I enjoy doing custom fits for customers where locks and hardware has to be modified in a unique way to solve a problem for a customer. Also, single pin picking, impressioning and non-destructive entry of all kinds has always been a passion of mine.

I had the privilege this year of working with Ken Peterson from Peterson tools in the USA to produce a pick based of one of my designs to pick inline restricted profiles found in Australia. That was pretty cool!

What key issues do you think will affect the locksmith industry in the coming decade and how do you think these should be approached?

I think one of the issues we may face in the next decade is large hardware companies trying to swallow smaller trades and starting to provide installation services.

Some are providing cheap “lock installation services” and paying struggling young locksmiths a reduced fee to install a lock purchased at their hardware store. This is worrying to me as I think this country thrives on small business and healthy competition in order to keep the integrity of trades & industries.

Another issue is non-qualified locksmiths running a business and ripping customers off. Often they are preying on the vulnerability of someone being locked out at night to extort them out of a lot of money. I feel it damages the reputation of locksmiths in the eyes of these customers and the public that have been scammed.

How to approach both of these as an industry is a great question and one I do not know the answer to. However, I think locksmiths, suppliers and the industry as a whole coming together and regularly communicating with each other is the first step. Not much can be done by one person and coming together and communicating will not only help all of us by sharing information and knowledge but will also help our industry to galvanise & become more united.

Tell us why you should be Australia’s best young locksmith.

I think I should be Australia’s best young locksmith because I have dedicated a large portion of my life to this trade and have no plans on stopping anytime soon!

Next year I will be returning to TAFE to learn more about safes and trying to improve my skills as a locksmith. I have plans in the future to hire an apprentice and hope to share the knowledge that I received from mentors onto a new generation. I think it is our duty as qualified security professionals to provide the absolute best customer service to the public to ensure the safety of the community. This can only be done if we have dedicated professionals that never stop growing and I always strive to be one of those people. 

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