Alyce Benson was born and bred in Lismore. She had a passion for sport and fitness that led to her buying her own gym in the CBD before the big flood almost ruined that dream. It has been a fight to get back to where Alyce wants to be but she is not one to give up. Lara Bell sat down to discover Alyce's life story.

I was born in Lismore in 1987 and grew up here my whole life, Bentley, actually, which is 15 minutes from Lismore. My parents are still there to this day, so it's nice going back out there.

Growing up here was fantastic because you've got the best of both worlds as far as living the country life but also the beaches aren't too far away. Growing up in a small town like this you know a lot of people, so it's nice to have lots of friends and networks.

Growing up on the farm was fantastic with motorbikes and paddock bashers etc. Now I've got my own kids and they go out to the farm that we grew up on, and do the same thing as what we did. 

South Lismore was our primary school, then onto Lismore High. For my whole life, sports was a huge part of my world. Swimming was my biggest achievement. I went to Nationals many times, swimming breaststroke.

(Alex Mills, Alyce Benson, Alex Hahn and Jessica Henshaw)

I swam nine to ten times a week, year in, year out. It was a huge commitment and, you know, kudos to my parents (my dad mainly) getting up at 4am with me every day to take me swimming and then either mum or dad picking me up to take me back home. I did that from about the age of 12. I just loved it, it was something I was passionate about.

I also played hockey from the age of 12. And I did that right through to the age of 18. And I also do little athletics in the offseason. I was a really good sprinter and a long jumper.

When I was in year 12 I won the “Pierre De Coubertin Award” in recognition of my sporting achievements which are consistent with the aims of the Olympic movement. I was the only female in the state given the award that year. So yes - sport has been my whole life from a very young age. Growing up on the farm there was no such thing as iPads and technology. We were outside all the time, constantly active. 

Through high school, I was part of every sporting team that they offered. I loved helping coach the teams as well. And then take some of them onto state level. I just liked being fit and healthy really. I guess that's where owning the gym all started really - my passion for sport, fitness and being in that group environment. Pretty much the start of year 11 I knew what I wanted to do and that was work in a gym doing personal training group fitness.

In 2005 I completed my HSC and then (the last day of my exams) I moved to the Gold Coast to study my Cert III and IV for fitness. I lived there for almost two years and I hated it. I'm not a city girl. But my twin brother was living there and my older brother was living there, so I moved in with them.

Then I worked there for almost two years in gyms and that was sort of my start in the fitness industry.

I loved it but hated the Gold Coast. So yeah, I moved back home to Lismore in early 2008. I bought my first house when I was 20 and renovated it and was doing that whilst working full time in a gym and here we are now, almost 18 years later, and I'm still doing what I had set out to do. But now, I own my own gym, which is what I've always wanted.

I went and did my aqua aerobics and boxing course, I did a metafit and group fitness instructor course and that was all outside of my Cert III and IV training. I've also done a business diploma and a marketing diploma - that's all based around managerial work for the gym. So in the 18 years of working in gyms, I've been in management a lot of that time.

I worked at GSAC for 11 years acting in managerial roles and, yeah, then Stepz Fitness opened and I started managing this gym.

The owner lived in Sydney and from the get go, one of the first questions he asked me was ‘Would you ever want to own your own gym?’ And I was all for it. I guess, from when I started in August 2020 I always knew at some point, this would be mine, so I ran it like it was my own business. Even though I wasn't technically the owner, it was still my baby.

It took a while to commit to buying the gym in the first place because, you know, the hesitancy of being in a flood zone. My husband was really worried about that. Making that decision and taking that leap of faith really wasn’t easy. On the 17th of February 2022 we officially took ownership and then 10 days later - disaster!

(Stepz before and after February 28 2022)

There had been floods before, but nothing to that extent. We actually made the call on the Saturday night, a couple of days before the flood, to start moving gym equipment. We always had a flood plan on paper, but until you put that into action, you've got no idea how long it takes you to move things.

We started making calls to all your team members to ask ‘hey, who can come help us?’ so we had about 15 people helping us move stuff. We moved what we could but not everything could be moved. And then Sunday we came back and we were helping other shops move all their stuff as well. We decided to stay the night because we thought it was best to get in and wash any mud out early. So that's why we decided to stay and knowing that this is such a big building we felt we would be safe.

We knew that it was going to be a big flood but no one knew it would be as bad as what it actually was. We thought personally that it was going to be a 13-metre flood. That's what we had prepared ourselves for.

As the night progressed, we weren't sleeping because it was so loud, it sounded like a cyclone - I don't know how people slept through it. We were up worried all night.

We were constantly coming back down here wondering what else we could do. The SES kept sending text messages out every couple of hours updating us just to what the new river heights was going be. As soon as it went from a 13-meter flood to 13.5 meters of flooding we thought ‘uh-oh, how high is the second floor?’ because that's where we (and all our equipment) was. So we got the tape measure out and discovered that it was 13.4 meters. 

So then it was kind of like, well, it's game over. Everything we put upstairs gets flooded anyway. What do you do? I think about 1.30 in the morning when the last text came through, and it was going to be around a 14.5 to 15-meter flood.

At 2.30 in the morning, the water started coming through the shopping centre. And we watched it come through. An hour and a half is all it took to go from the ground floor to the second floor. We could hear everything being destroyed. I remember at one point I turned to Paul and I was sobbing… sorry, I’m still emotional! Talking about it just brings back memories. I can still remember that day, minute by minute, hour by hour exactly where the water was on each of those buildings. It's cemented into my brain.

(Carrington Street on March 1 2022)

The Centre Manager stayed the night with us, as well as my mum, a cleaner and a security guard. There were six of us that stayed there. They all came over and gave me a big hug and said, ‘Look, we need to get to the roof. Grab whatever supplies you have’. We had water, food, blankets. We carted stuff up a ladder, up to the roof.

We had garbage bags as ponchos to try and protect us from the rain. We actually stayed under the plastic dome on top of the roof, so we had a bit of shelter from the rain. Watching it come into the centre was one thing - once we were up there, we could see everything. We were looking over at the motel and there were people stuck on the balcony, and they're all going ‘help us, how do we get off here?’

We got rescued by a boat. Some friends came and got us and that was about 10.30 in the morning. So we'd been up on the roof for about four hours by then. A beautiful friend of ours put us up in her house for a few days. The kids were out with Paul’s parents.

We don't have flood insurance it is too expensive. We got quoted $40,000 a year! Who can afford that? I don't think anyone in town can. So we only had stormwater insurance and I think because we stayed the night, and we had video evidence and photos of the initial stormwater that came through the centre, we were able to claim.

We were very much one of the lucky ones really because so many people didn't get stormwater cover. And the shopping centre was very, very helpful and they helped pay for some of our fit-out as well. We've been really blessed by people helping out through my GoFundMe page as well, which all helped to get us back to where we are today. We couldn't have done it otherwise.

You go from your highest of highs to your lowest of lows in such a short amount of time, and then stress runs your life. Where do we go from here? How do we rebuild? What can we salvage? What's gonna get tossed out? You know, how long is it gonna take to rebuild, if we do rebuild because it was huge?

Paul was a lot more stressed than I was. He was adamant we were not coming back. He had his walls up. He works in garage doors. So he was going around and quoting all these families and businesses that have just been flood-affected themselves and seeing and hearing all the trauma. That was really hard for him. He couldn't escape because he had one week off work and then it was right back amongst it.

I always tried to stay as positive as possible. I personally knew we were always going to rebuild. But it was a matter of how do we do this? Where do we get the finances? For the first four or five months, there was not knowing where the future was going to take us and what we were going to do.

It wasn't till about yet six months after the flood that the insurance company got in contact with us and said that we had some money coming through. So that's when we could really start thinking about the positives and planning for the future.

We were very blessed in finding a builder, Gary Rossington - an absolute legend. I found him a few months after the flood. I just happened to be at a cafe, and he was there hearing me talk to someone so he reached out to me and we stayed in contact the whole time.

What made it easier for us to refit is that we went back to the initial suppliers who built the gym in the first place because it was only 18 months old at the time of the flood. So everything in here was brand new anyway. It was really easy to go back to them to say can you build me the exact same thing as what you built last time? Just don't bolt anything to the floor - I need everything on wheels! We've built back a lot better this time. So we are feeling really positive now we've rebuilt. 

Here we are now, 23 months post-flood. We've been back open now 11 months, and the gym is doing better than it ever was, even before the flood. So now I guess we’re really setting our eyes on what the future holds for the gym and where we can take it now that we've got past the initial rebuild phase and got it back to where we were membership-wise pre-flood. The next goal is to set sights on more members and growing the business to become better than ever. 

(Stepz just before its grand opening in August 2020)

We can't dwell on the past. I’m not a negative person. I'm always a positive person. You just have to shake the bad stuff off. You can't live life dragging it around because that impacts not only you but other people too. People come here to Stepz, not just for physical changes, it's so much about their mental health. If I was not a positive person, then that would impact other people. I love what I do. I'm a social person.

On a personal note - I first met my husband in high school. We were in the same grade, but Paul was pretty shy back then. We didn't talk too much. Five years after I finished school, we met each other again while he was training at the gym that I was working at and he was working on his shoulder as he just had shoulder surgery. We just got talking and then we started dating, then in 2011 we got engaged and then in the same year we got married.

In 2012, we welcomed our little girl into the world, Amelia. She's now 11. Then in 2014, we welcomed our son Logan into the world.

Having kids in your mid-20s is great - you're busy working but you also have a whole social life with them and can be super active. I have always wanted to be a mum but I also love my job, so trying to juggle both was always a hard task but we had both our parents helping us.

Paul's mum and dad and my mum and dad helped us out from day one. That allowed me to go back to work very soon - I actually only had two weeks off with both our kids. I was casual at the time, so I didn’t have maternity leave benefits and I wanted to keep my position there. Even now both sets of grandparents help out on a weekly basis. They do that because they want to support us and they love us and they love spending time with their grandchildren. I know the kids absolutely love seeing grandparents (also because they get ice cream and slushies and endless lollies, hahaha!) They have the biggest smiles when they see their grandparents.

Working full time with a family you have to be so organised. I like things to be tidy and routine. I like everything to be chill. So everything's got its place, everything’s organised, everything’s planned out weeks in advance. That's how I operate. I am currently working 40 hours a week. I do it all myself here - the planning, the marketing, the advertising, the cleaning. I don't have any help.

I spend about two hours a day cleaning and many many hours each week attending to marketing. There are a lot of other small things that come into running the business. Sometimes I can switch off really easily and then other times I'll find myself on weekends, spending hours on the computer doing financials or business or planning, whatever it might be. But I try not to book myself out with PT sessions so that I have time to finish everything while I’m at work because when I leave here, I want to be a mum.

I don't want to be a businesswoman and a mum clashing. I want to be present with my kids. So I try and leave work at work. If I could knock back a few hours so I can take the kids to sport and spend a bit more time with them, that would be great. That's something that I look forward to. I know that's in the foreseeable future and I’m working towards it. I know the kids would appreciate that too.

I've always been a driven person. If I want something I usually go after it and I make it happen if it's something that I know will benefit me, my husband and our family in the future. I think, well, if someone else can do that, I know I can do it too. I guess with 18 years' worth of experience in the fitness industry, I know what I'm doing. I know how to run a business and to me, it's not hard.

I don't get stressed. Everything's cruisy - I guess it comes back to being organised. Everything is planned and well-thought-out, usually weeks and months in advance for what's coming up.

As far as what Stepz offers, we are a 24/7 gym, we offer over 18 classes a week. There's staff here 50 hours a week as well, who are super approachable, if people want to come in and have a chat, or if they need assistance or ask questions.

You totally don't have to be fit. Anyone who signs up gets a free gym program. We do that so that everyone is feeling confident. They know how to use the machines safely and correctly. They can come in and do their own workout knowing that it's controlled and they know what weights how many sets and reps they're doing. That helps them relax and be more at ease and they don't feel intimidated. If someone's got an injury, you modify the exercise and give them something else to do. That way they still feel included.

And that way everyone's doing something all at the same time but you cater for all age groups are fitness levels. We’ve also got an exercise physiologist, working near, his name's Lachlan. He is essentially full time running his business from here. We've got Johann, he's a personal trainer. He also runs his business from here and then Ashley who is a personal trainer and she also does classes.

I love seeing people gradually getting into something new and seeing them blossom. That is the best thing.