'It takes so much guts': the story behind the little Canberra boats that could

Tyrrell and his fiancee Courtney Mullen, a partner in a local family law firm, have just welcomed their second child, 11-week-old Matilda, a sister for Thomas, three.

They live in Griffith, not far from the GoBoat moorings on the Kingston foreshore.

"We've decided to bring up our kids in Canberra, in part because there are so many activities and it's so family-friendly," Tyrrell said, as he settled down to coffee at his local, Bean and Table.

"Canberra is home for our family, it's the home of GoBoat."

Since Tyrrell launched GoBoat, self-captained electric picnic boats, on Lake Burley Griffin in 2017, he's seen the business expand across three states.

Seven years ago, he had to sell his house in Yass to come up with the $250,000 needed to launch four boats in Canberra.

There are now 70 GoBoats gliding on lakes and rivers in the ACT, NSW, Queensland and Victoria. And even on Sydney Harbour. The homegrown business last year turned over $6 million. Each year, nationally, 150,000 people are using a GoBoat.

Apart from some partners in Melbourne, GoBoat is otherwise a Canberra-based, family-operated company.

GoBoat has also become a new, popular tourist attraction in Canberra, but 80 per cent of its customers are locals, who often want to proudly show off their city to visitors. The business won its first Canberra Region Tourism Award last year.

"This Canberra born and bred company is now providing those experiences all across the country, which we couldn't have done without the support of Canberra," he said.

Tyrrell is also completing a law degree at the University of Canberra. And politics? Well, never say never. He is a former Liberal councillor on the Blacktown City Council and may make a tilt at the Canberra Liberals presidency.

Tyrrell - who turns 43 on Saturday - doesn't take any of his success for granted.

He says a strong work ethic was instilled in him by his parents, who worked "incredibly hard" to raise him and his two siblings. His mum was only 17 and his dad just 18 when they had him and money was always tight. His dad was a truck driver then tradie and things were never easy.

But how did someone who grew up close to coastal Coffs Harbour come to launch a boat business in landlocked Canberra?

The answer very much reflects Tyrrell's humble beginnings and his dogged determination to ensure everyone gets access to the good stuff in life.

A former staffer for NSW Liberal politicians including Barry O'Farrell, Pru Goward and Gladys Berejiklian, Tyrrell moved to Canberra in 2015, mostly to get away from the Sydney rat race and the 24/7 demands of life in politics.

He moved to Canberra to be the director of external affairs at the Australian Automobile Association, living initially in Yass. He also worked for a year for government relations firm Capital Hill Advisory, set up by Liberal Party powerbrokers.

Then he went on a holiday to Sweden in 2016 and came across electric boats and couldn't get over how easy they were to drive and how accessible they were to everyone. Growing up in Woolgoolga, just south of Coffs Harbour, he'd never had a boat, didn't even know someone who did. The family was more focused on just getting by. But, here he was, years later, driving one himself.

Tyrrell calls it his "revelatory moment". He'd take electric boats to Canberra's Lake Burley Griffin, based at the Kingston foreshore.

"I sold my house and pretty much invested everything I had into getting this to Kingston. It was a lot of juggling to make it happen and self-doubt but also just enough courage," he said.

"When I first came to Canberra, it did surprise me coming from Sydney where there's so much activity on the water every day of the week, that I could drive over Kings Avenue Bridge, morning and night, and the most activity you'd see was the rowers out in the morning.

"And it always sort of fascinated me that a city that was built around a lake, made it so hard to get out on the water."

When he was told "it would be a bit to difficult to get more activity on the lake, it was a bit like a red rag to a bull and I couldn't help but pull the thread on that jumper".

It took two years of negotiating with the ACT Government and National Capital Authority to make GoBoat happen. Tyrrell, for a start, had to get a regulation changed that required anyone operating a powered boat on the lake to have a boat licence.

"The ACT Government doesn't even issue boat licences, so it was practically impossible to get out on the water," he said.

Now, pretty much anyone can be captain of a GoBoat. No boat licence is needed. The Danish-designed boats are speed-limited and start with the push of a button. There's a table on board for a picnic and and pets are welcome. Eight people at a time can use the boats. In Canberra, GoBoat now sails from the Kingston foreshore and Queen Elizabeth Terrace at the central basin of the lake.

GoBoat also has a warehouse and office in Hume for its boats and merchandise. The boats themselves are made in Australia using recycled cardboard and plastics. They are the first and, so far, only electric boats manufactured in Australia. One boat saves the equivalent of 18,000 plastic bottles from ending up in landfill or waterways.

Last year, GoBoat won the national Sustainability in the Boating Industry Award from the Boating Industry Association.

"I think this is another reason as to why GoBoat has been popular - people are seeking out opportunities to have fun in an environmentally-friendly way," Tyrrell said.

More recently, Tyrell teamed up with James Souter from The Boathouse to open the Margot cafe and bar in a kiosk on the southern shores of Lake Burley Griffin early last year.

"A few years ago when Thomas was born and I would look after him a day a week, we'd walk around the lake, and not to be disparaging to anyone, I felt like we couldn't get a good coffee quickly around the lake," he said.

"I thought, 'This is the centre of Canberra, thousands of people walk around the lake, all the tourists are here' and I wanted to created something that was really open and accessible and had a nice feel to it, where you could get a good coffee quickly. So Margot was born from that."

After school, Tyrrell started studying commerce in WA but dropped out to work in marketing for McDonald's before becoming a political staffer. He's now working on getting his law degree from UC to help other small business owners achieve their dreams.

"It takes so much guts to put your house on the line, or your savings, to just have a go at creating something new," he said.

"And it's so hard. We do make it hard in Australia with some pretty heavy-handed regulations. And it's a lot harder to get capital in Australia as well. I would say it's almost the most fun part of my work life now helping other people with their fledging businesses or refining ideas that they have."

Tyrrell said growing up, his family was not political but he and his younger sister, at least, both ended up in political jobs.

"You can grow up in exactly the same household, have exactly the same upbringing and I've gone down one path and worked for the Liberal Government in NSW and my sister is a union organiser in Victoria," he said.

"I will always come down on the side of, 'How can we make government more efficient?'. And, generally, that's by making it a bit more smaller and a bit less intrusive in people's lives.

"My favourite policy of the O'Farrell government in which I worked, was the 'one on, two off' regulation policy. That was, if we ever had to introduce a new regulation in our portfolio, we had to accompany it with two regulations that we wanted to remove. That's the kind of philosophy I have with politics - the more we trust people to do what they think is right with their own income and what they work hard for, the better everyone does."

While he has no interest in standing for the Legislative Assembly, at least not for this year's election, Tyrrell was set to stand for the Canberra Liberals presidency late last year but pulled out at the last minute due to a medical emergency involving their newborn Matilda, who has since recovered. The presidency is still empty. Maybe not for long.

"Community is really important to me and if I can make a contribution to the place I live, in a positive way, I'll do that," Tyrrell said.