03/12/2025
RIP Geoff Scott (25.4.1951 - 3.12.2025)
Geoff Scott was a legendary bicycle race frame builder. He built frames for the Australian national track and road teams throughout the 1980s.
Geoff Scott was interviewed by Marc Sebastian Rerceretnam on 29 March 2021
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Geoff Scott was born on the 25th April 1951 in Barmedman, in southwest NSW. He moved to Sydney with his family when he was around 8 years old. His father was a Toolmaker and Bondi Lifesaver and his mother was a Nurse from Darwin. She was retrained as a Hairdresser after World War II and opened her own hairdressing saloon in the western Sydney suburb of Fairfield.
Geoff lived with his family and older half-brother, Johnny Scott who was 10 years his senior, and a sister. Johnny was the cyclist in the family. Geoff also had uncles (his mother’s brothers) who were also cyclists. Geoff started riding bikes when he was fourteen. By this time, his older brother Johnny was riding with the NSW League of Wheelmen.
Geoff married his wife Sue around 1971, at age 19, just before he was enlisted to the Australian Armed Forces. Fortunately, he was not shipped off to fight in Vietnam because he was downgraded for medical reasons. He moved around a bit in the following years, for short stints in Melbourne and then back to the Sydney suburb of Liverpool, shortly after.
From 1976, Geoff was a qualified Tool maker in Industrial Design. While in Sydney, he worked in several firms. Firstly, with the furniture company Harry Sebel, and later with Minto-based engineering company Space-made Precision Wireworks, as a project manager.
While he pursued his engineering career, he rode and raced with the (professional) NSW League of Wheelmen, to ‘make some money on the side’. ‘Sometimes we might have 200 riders and we all put 10 bucks in, that’s nearly a week’s wages’, he said.
While in Sydney he made life-long friendships with the likes of Bob Hines (Bob Hine’s Cyclemart), Alan Reynolds and later, NSW cycle luminaries like Alex Fulcher (long-time national cycling coach) and Ray Godkin. By about 1980, Bob’s bicycle business expanded considerably, and Geoff set up all his engineering gear in Bob’s workshop soon after. Through their connections with Alex Fulcher and Ray Godkin, Geoff was tasked to build racing frames for the Australian cycling team. From 1981, Geoff was tasked to build Time-Trail racers for the 1982 Commonwealth Games and for the upcoming 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, along with many other national and state competitions through the 1980s. The 4000m pursuit team won a gold medal using Geoff’s bikes! Geoff, Alex Fulcher and Bob Hines became such celebrities, Fairfield Council gave them the keys to Fairfield City shortly after. From 1989, Geoff built bike race frames for the New Zealand team.
By the 1980s, Geoff was largely working as an independent frame builder, supplying various Sydney bike businesses. As observed by old friend Bob Hines, Geoff was an exceptional bike frame builder because he was able to ‘adapt and change stuff and think out new ideas’. It was during this decade, he met Tony Cook, the then owner of Clarence Street Cyclery. Cook employed Geoff to supply his business with high-end road race frames. However, by 1993, Trek USA wanted to set up shop in Australia and with Clarence Street Cyclery being their Australian distributor, they needed a Trek-qualified and certified repair specialist. In turn, Geoff travelled to the US to get trained and certified and came back to Sydney to set up Trek Australia at Clarence Street Cyclery.
By 2000, Geoff worked in various positions, not always related to cycling or frame building. By 2008, Tony Cook approached Geoff again, but this time Geoff was only willing to supply frames independently. He built frames at his home workshop in Camden, until Clarence Street Cyclery discontinued this around 2018. Around this time, Geoff also stopped manufacturing new frames, largely because of the high cost of liability insurance. He concentrated on frame repair and painting.
Geoff moved to Orange in the early 2020s.
