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Fiona and Paul met during the first year of
university – both studying Engineering at The
University of Melbourne. Although they had quite
different interests outside of their studies, they quickly formed a close
bond. It wasn’t too long before Paul introduced Fi
to the world of hiking – something she took to like
a duck to water!
Around this time, Paul
decided that he'd like to try mountaineering and
booked himself into a course in New Zealand.
Here he gained his first mountaineering experiences
and learnt about the technical aspects like crevasse
rescue techniques, self-arresting (using an ice-axe
to stop yourself when falling), glacier travel,
and ice-climbing. Despite the fact that
bad weather prevented a climb up Mount Cook, the
exhaustion of long-days at altitude, and even seeing
another party swept away by an avalanche (luckily
everyone was ok), Paul was hooked. Fi joined
him at the end of this trip for some hiking and
traveling.
Not long after they met, Paul and Fiona moved in
to a shared rental house close to university – where
the rent was cheap but they battled with ceilings
literally falling down around their ears, some
dodgy housemates, no heating
whatsoever, and even a rat in the toilet!
  
They studied together and both worked in
different Pizza Haven shops, saving to purchase their
first house. After 2 years of engineering, Fiona
decided to change her study direction and switched
courses to study
Marketing at RMIT. She later worked at a small
firm as a marketing coordinator, and then at Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting) as a
business strategy consultant. After going
their separate ways with study and work, from 2000
to 2005 Paul
and Fiona worked together, managing Invizage
Technology – the I.T. services firm Paul and Brad
Bond founded in
1996.
During this time they
squeezed in as much travel as possible, visiting
Nepal, South America, Africa, Canada and the US,
Kazakhstan, Thailand, some Pacific Islands and parts
of Europe. Much of this travel was based
around mountain climbs – see
previous climbing trips for more details on some of these.
Fiona also began studying her MBA with
Melbourne Business School - she is still studying
part-time now (approximately two thirds completed).
In January 2005, Fi and Paul
were married in a winery on the Mornington
Peninsula.
During 2004-2005, Invizage was acquired in two stages by Sensis
(part of Telstra and best known for the Yellow Pages
and Whitepages brands). At this time, Fiona
began working for Sensis as the
marketing manager for a group of businesses which
included Invizage, Whereis and UBD.
Given that a huge phase in their lives had come
to an end (running Invizage), Paul and
Fiona realised that without business or family
commitments, they now had an unique opportunity to attempt to climb Mount
Everest in the 2006 climbing season. This had been a "fuzzy" goal that they had
held for
a long time but one that was quickly coming into
focus (see more about our dream
here).
After returning from a trip
to Europe where they climbed the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc, the
decision was consolidated and the serious training
began. This eventually meant that
Fiona had to resign from work as the combined
efforts of work, training and study were proving an
impossible ask (Paul hadn't worked since the final
acquisition in July 2005).
And so that leads us to
where we are today - training hard and organising
our equipment in preparation for the biggest
challenge of our lives! | 
