Australia IV

Bill Fisher Junior is a fifth-generation boat builder and part of one of Sydney's most respected boat building families. His father, Tom Fisher, and grandfather Bill Fisher senior built the original Australia IV back in 1943. It was club champion in 1944 and 1945 and State Champion in 1945 and 1946.

His great grandfather Charles Alexander Meredith (CAM) Fisher was born in Dunedin, New Zealand on January 10, 1864. As a boy he travelled to Fiji with his parents, where he served his apprenticeship with his father, learning design and shipbuilding. He arrived in Sydney in 1889 at the age of twenty-five. Entering into business at Berrys Bay, Blues Point, North Sydney, he established a boat building yard which thrived for thirty years, during which time he was a keen follower of sailing, winning the 16-foot NSW State Championship for the season 1909-10 with the Truant.

He transferred his boat-building yard to La Perouse in 1922, where he pioneered the ferry service between La Perouse and Kurnell, the landing place of Captain James Cook in 1770. During this time he taught his two sons, Bill and Jack, the art of boat building and design, and they continued the business after their father passed away on the 2nd of October 1934.

The eldest boy, Bill Fisher, began his sailing career with the 6-footer Queenie. He also built the 6-footer Given, the 10-footer Truant and a 16-footer named Vim, which brought him to the attention of several 18-footer owners. In 1918, at the age of twenty-seven, he was given the helm of Arline, one of the crack eighteen footers, as a replacement skipper for Bill Edney, and won his first race in fresh conditions. He continued with Arline up to 1920, when he began to build his own 18-footer, which he launched in 1921 named Australia, a name with which the Fishers will always be associated.

There were many trophies and prizes. Fisher and Australia laid claim to the 1927, 1928 and 1931 Sydney Flying Squadron Championships, and the NSW State Championship in 1923 and 1925. When the NSW 18-footer Sailing League started in 1935, Bill Fisher was a foundation member. In 1936 Bill built the second Australia with his sons. She was not the success they had hoped for, and in 1938 the Fishers launched Australia III, following it up with the very successful Australia IV in 1943.

The replica was built by Bill Fisher Jnr as a tribute to his family, with the design taken off the original half model owned and passed down through the generations. The hull was cold moulded in three skins of cedar, with silver ash used for the ribs and scantlings. She was built in the lounge room of a vacant house in Tin Can Bay, Queensland. The room was on the first floor, so about a dozen people were needed to manhandle her out the window and over the veranda. Tony Fechner, a marine trimmer and family friend, gave a lot of help, John “Woody” Winning supplied a fair percentage of the materials, rigged the boat and paid for sails, and Ken Beashel supplied some of the cedar. The boat is owned by the Trust, and Bill Fisher Jnr requested that Woody be the skipper.

Bill Fisher Jnr said of the project: “I hope that this is a fitting tribute to my family. Not just one person but the whole family and our boat building heritage.”