A real-world role model to inspire us all: The Dave Fendt story

ALICE Springs family man, business manager and motorsport enthusiast Dave Fendt is a bloke you can’t help but respect and admire greatly – and the more you learn about him, the more that admiration grows.

Dave Fendt with Kennards Hire’s Chamber of Commerce award for best business in Alice Springs in 2015. Picture: Rex Nicholson

DAVE Fendt is one of those blokes you instantly just love. And that great initial vibe is then proven right with everything he does.

Humble, honest and bloody good fun to be around, as a husband, dad, son, mate and boss he absolutely excels.

He is someone you respect and admire greatly.

And the more you learn and about Dave Fendt, the more that admiration grows.

Dave was born in Adelaide in 1986, but spent most of his childhood growing up with little sister Sheree in Port Lincoln.

“We lived at my grandparents’, and that was really cool,” he said.

“They played a big role in bringing my sister and me up.

“We lived a 500m walk from the jetty. After school I’d go fishing and catch whiting. My grandpa taught me how to fillet them, and my grandma taught me how to cook them.

“I tried my hardest to play sports. I played footy with Marble Range. They were a good club and I was an ordinary player!

“I played baseball with North Shields Tigers – I loved that sport, but I was hopeless. It was a great team though, and we won the premiership every year.

In Easter 2000, Dave moved to Alice aged 13.

“I changed schools a lot as a kid, so much so – and I’m a left-hander- I never got my pen licence!,” he said.

“I was not an academic, but I made lifelong friends out of high school.

“I finished and passed Year 12. I didn’t want to be there, but I didn’t want to drop out and not have anything worthwhile to do.”

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Commitment to the cause and the work ethic and discipline to follow through are defining characteristics of Dave Fendt.

And Dave says a lot of credit for that goes to his dad, Graham.

“Dad definitely put a lot of my work values in to me,” he said.

“Even when I got my first job as a kid working at Hungry Jacks, he said, ‘mate, you just need to make sure you’re 15 minutes early, and you leave 10 minutes late.

“And my stepmum Vicky has been just like a mum to me.”

Dave says his little sister Sheree is also very special to him.

“She’s cool, she’s loving life, living in Perth now, so I don’t get to see enough of her, but we still speak a fair bit,” he said.

“She’s with a great guy, Jason, and they’ve got two awesome little girls.”

Out of high school, Dave did his apprenticeship as a mechanic, and would eventually head to work at the Granites Gold Mine.

One night at the indoor beach volleyball centre, Dave’s life changed forever.

“A friend’s mum introduced me to a girl called Michelle,” he said.

“I didn’t pay much attention – I thought she was a bit cute, but a bit young.

“Then I was at Rock Bar, and she was there with a bunch of her friends.

“She gave me her number! She put it in my phone under the name ‘Sexy Shell’.

“It’s still in there today as Sexy Shell!

“Michelle’s now working as a bookkeeper, and I send her number to people looking for help, and I have to always remember to change the name in my phone before I send it!

“That was 12 years ago! We got together, and Michelle had come up to Alice from Victoria just for a 12 month gap year from uni.

“I’m still gobsmacked that she decided to stay to be with me. I pinch myself most days.

“Michelle lets me be me, and helps me be me.”

So much so, Dave and Michelle’s honeymoon was cut short so Dave could get back in time to race his bike at a drag racing meet!

“It was 2009, and we’d booked and planned the honeymoon and everything, then they brought out the drags’ calendar!,” he said.

“Michelle let me cut it short, and we flew home early on the Saturday. Then Dan Sawyer picked us up from the airport and took me straight out to the strip for qualifying.”

Dave won the race weekend, taking out the street bracket, and Michelle volunteered as a marshall. How good is that!

So good, in fact, it got national motorsport press coverage.

But Dave says Michelle also “isn’t scared to ground me and tell me when I need to pull my head in – she’ll snap me back to reality.”.

“We work incredibly well together,” he said.

Dave and Michelle have together, as such a strongly bonded union, had to endure the gravest of tragedies.

At 40 weeks, they lost their little girl Natalie.

“It sucked the life out of us,” he said.

“I still think about her every day. Her name is tattooed on my arm.

“Over time I worked out that this was going to be the hardest thing I’d ever have to deal with. That was a way to get through it. To know, if I can get through this, I can get through anything.

“It never gets any better. It just gets easier to deal with. You lose that feeling of not wanting to get out of bed every day. You’ve got to really push through.”

Dave said a big lesson he learned was to open up and talk.

“That’s the thing with men’s mental health,” he said.

“We are always taught to be alpha and dominant. But it’s so important to speak to somebody. “I’ve done that and it’s made a really big difference.

“Everyone has their own unique challenges – the person you become is how you get through them.”

Dave and Michelle have their beautiful eight year old daughter Rachel, and handsome young five year old man, Brock.

Dave says the love he has for his kids is indescribable.

“It’s the coolest thing in the world,” he said.

“It’s not easy, it’s hard work, but the joy you get, the pride you get, is unbelievable!

“Michelle is an outstanding mum, she works so hard. I wouldn’t be the person I am, or parent I am, without her.”

Dave says Rachel is a ‘daddy’s girl’, and is already reading novels. She loves the Enid Blyton series, Malory Towers.

“Brock is like a mini-me,” he said.

“Now I know what Michelle has to deal with. Now she’s got two of us!

“He wants to be with dad, and he’s a flat out little boy, but in a really good way!”

Dave says a big thing he’s learnt is to help nurture that inquisitive and energetic nature of his kids.

“You can’t suppress a kid. Their little minds are developing, they are like sponges. And they ask a lot of questions, but the minute you try to stop that, maybe they’ll stop asking, and they’ll stop learning, and it might stagnate their growth,” he said.

“You want to try to keep helping expand their little brain capacity. And yeah it might be taxing, but it’s worth it, to help give them their best chance.”

As aforementioned, a massive passion for Dave is motorsport.

He was a gun on the drags’ strip on his bike, taking out a stack of race meets, and was crowned the rookie of the year.

But his biggest passion came to fruition off the strip, and in the shed.

A chance invitation by Andrew Cole to help work on his drags car has led to Dave now being crew chief.

“There’s a big feeling of achievement and pride when it goes well in a race, and you know you’ve made a contribution to making that happen,” he said.

“We’ve done the car up to the next level, from Sportsman Racing to now at Doorslammer level.

“We’ll race a couple up in Darwin, and then back here. If we can do a five second pass in Darwin, I’ll retire a happy man!”

Dave Fendt at the dragway as crew chief for Andrew Cole Drag Racing. Picture: Supplied

Dave has been the manager at Kennards Hire for the best part of a decade.

His reputation for honesty and integrity is renowned throughout the town.

Dave has led his team on a remarkable journey of success, taking out gold status, which places his store in Australia’s top ten per cent.

The Alice branch has often been ranked best in the NT, and in 2015 it was crowned the best business in Alice by the Chamber of Commerce.

“Kennards are brilliant!,” Dave said.

“They are an amazing company, family owned.

“Their senior management make the effort to know who you are and what you’re about.

“They’ve got a great set of values and that makes it an awesome place to work for.”

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A place with a great set of values … I don’t think you could find a better man to steer that ship than Dave Fendt.