Azzy Jay: Creator of worlds

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The Nugget
April 04, 2025

★ Reviewing Fringe with Azzy Jay ★

Castlemaine Fringe Festival Director, Azzy Jay, has a light in her that lights up our town.

Azzy Jay was gracious enough to be our first guest on the Nugget radio show on MainFM. It aged me approximately eleventy-thousand years.

Not the conversation - that was amazing. The buttons and levels and switching between audio inputs, however, took years off my life.

Was there accidental dead air at points? YES.

I’m going to go rock in the corner and let Azzy share her Fringe update with you in her own words. Get ready to collect her pearls of wisdom and bask in her shiny personality.

Sweet moments amongst the chaos

"It has been foot on the gas. You know those circus rides where you get stuck to the wall and the floor falls away? Yeah, the Gravitron! It's been a bit like that, but it's been so amazing."

Azzy says some personal moments stand out, like meeting Tubby the Robot at the Street Party and having a singalong with friends at the piano on the steps of the Market Building.

"We had a good old go at Flame Trees, we were singing on the stairs. That was amazing. I love the sense of festival."

Ticket sales

"We've had so many sold out shows. It's been incredible. The artists have done really, really, well in terms of ticket sales this year.”

"We launched six weeks before the festival started and immediately we saw really strong sales. People started realizing they were going to miss out.

"A lot of our venues are between 40-60 people and they've only got two or three shows on, so if you want to go you've really got to put your money where your mouth is and be like ‘I'm going to that show.’"

"There are a number of things that are sold out on the program this week, but there's also a number of things that are not. So, if you go to buy a ticket for something and it's sold out, please don't just go, 'I'm not going then.'"

"Find something to put your money behind."

Flamin’ Galah Fringe Hub

"I was like, this year, we're havin' a club."

The festival was short on small venues and Senior Citz was just the perfect size for a Fringe HQ.

"To have a small venue that we can run a bar in, and have a box office running, which we haven't done before – it’s really exciting."

"We've been able to pump it full of shows. There's been something on nearly every day at the Flamin' Galah and some days there's been four or five shows."

Big, sparkling growth

In 2023, there were 60 free and low-cost Fringe events. This year, the festival bulked up to 150+ events.

"I was looking at the two programs side-by-side last week and the incredible growth. That's been made possible through many hours of grant writing, lots of fundraising events, we've had so many people volunteer. It's just a massive, collective effort."

"I always want to see more but I don't think we can do anymore. I think this is about the size of what we want to get in terms of the amount of events because any more than that, and our heads will explode like Mars Attacks and I don't want to burst into flames."

Seeing artists live their dreams

"There's been lots of cups of tea with different artists across the year who have wanted to know about Fringe and how they could put shows on."

"The real highlight for me is seeing that come together and to go and see shows and to be like, 'Oh, I remember having that cup of tea with you and you were talking about putting that show on.'"

"The (majority) of the program is local people putting on what they do. We are just so full of talent in this town and I love seeing people do what they love and I love being able to facilitate that and being able to bring that all into one place."

Keeping Fringe accessible

"It's really important to me that we have events that are free.”

“We lose a lot if we go in a very corporate direction, if we don't make sure that there's free and accessible events on.

“Most of our tickets are around $20. To know that there's a street party that's on for everybody, that started early so the kids could come out and enjoy it as well, and our Monster Mash party coming up on Sunday."

"There's been free music on at the Taproom, there's exhibitions on, there's our beautiful Arts Trail that's got 40-50 open studios, again, as a way for people to have conversations and have connections. That's really important to me."

Fringe as a launch pad

"There's a couple people who've got new shows that they're testing. Stephanie Harrison, who did The Art of Seeking Attention, she's a long-standing performer. She's sold out her shows at Castlemaine Fringe and now she's just entered into Melbourne Fringe and she's gong off and she's touring it. That is just wonderful.”

"For people to have sold out shows is incredible and for people to just be getting bums on seats for a new show, to test that work, Fringe is a really important space to be able to do that."

Community connection

"It is such a great way to see art and also meet community."

“We all benefit from getting involved and getting behind events. Community is the heart of this program and Fringe just provides so many opportunities for people to connect."

Azzy says the flash mob at the street party is a gorgeous example.

“There were people from 18 to 84 in that flash mob. That was amazing to be able to see that and to see that diversity of experience.”

“That is what community connections are about: Getting together and learning the dance and coming together and doing the dance and celebrating after the dance and then seeing you in the supermarket and I know that you've got your moves."

"There's a gorgeous exhibition in the foyer of the Phee Broadway and the gentleman is in his 90s and it's his first exhibition.”

Brian Heydon, 96, worked for decades as a lawyer. Painting is a long-lost love that he has reconnected with.

"There are young people represented in the Frida exhibition.”

CSC art students have works showing in the Fringe and Frida Exhibition on at the Market Building.

“Fringe offers this great pathway into the arts. It is an opportunity to be seen and celebrated where you live, to dance where you live. To be part of the things that happen in your community is so important.”

Fringe as a Castlemaine gateway drug

"Fringe acts as this really wonderful gateway into our town it was a gateway for me. I was on the train. I had sort of been talking about moving to town and wanting to get involved. I knew there was cool stuff going on there, but I didn't know quite yet where my volunteer bucks were going to land."

"I was talking to Ronnie on the train and she was like, ‘Actually the Fringe group are meeting tonight and they really need some help you'd probably be really good there.’"

"I went along with my little notepad and started writing things down. I kind of walked away from that as a secretary of the organisation and that was eight years ago."

Our gorgeous social media queen, Anette, joined us as a fairly new person to town in the 2023 festival and she just did such a wonderful job and she met really gorgeous connections. Now, I see her at the golf course, I see her everywhere. She's just wonderful. It is a great way of meeting people.

❀ WHY AZZY MOVED TO CASTLEMAINE ❀

Here it is. Azzy’s Castlemaine-Meet-Cute, in her own glorious words, excerpted from our interview with her on The Nugget radio show on MainFM. Enjoy!

This is a story to be had over a beer, really.

I'm from the UK, originally. I had been travelling for a number of years. I landed in Australia after meeting some very fabulous and very dear Australian friends at Boom in Portugal (a psychedelic, sustainable music festival).

So, I came to Australia on a tourist visa. I knew I would still have my working holiday visa as a backup.

Because I'd been travelling for a number of years by this time, I was looking for where I was going to be – where home is. I had an idea that this was probably going to be Australia.

I got here, and then fell in love. Fell in love with the person, fell in love with the country, fell in love with everything. I went home thinking I've gotta get some money, gotta get my driving license, gonna go back. Did that: Tick, tick, tick.

I came back, had my heart broken in a thousand pieces. Ugh. It's ok - move on. I went to pick carrots and broccoli in Tasmania for a while, went on a big old trip, ended up living in Melbourne and was in Melbourne for a number of years on a number of visas.

I put myself on a savings plan and in four years time when I get my PR I will be able to put a deposit down on a house.

In the kind of three to six months before my residency came through, I was starting to look at buying churches in Gippsland and buying houses in different places where I had connections.

Over the couple of years beforehand, I had been to Castlemaine. It was one event, I don't know if it was a Fringe or State Festival or a random, but it was in partnership with (costumier) Rose Chong and when we got there they picked us up on a bus from the station and they drove us out — I think it was maybe at the Muckleford Hall — and there were people's heads turning on plates, like through the table, and I was like, this is my kind of town.

That's really stuck with me.

I came back and there was afterparty drinks happening at the Theatre and I was like, this town has got game! Like, this town loves a party!

I was still playing music in Melbourne. I wanted to be close enough to Melbourne that I could continue to live my Melbourne existence, but I wanted a town that I could get involved in. I wanted a town where being at the pub as a single woman wouldn't be weird and coming home from the pub, I would feel safe. Turns out we don't have any streetlights. It didn't matter. I didn't realize that until later.

That sense of safety and sense of potential for connection was really huge.

So I bought the house, after one look. It was the first house I looked at, really, apart from the church in Gippsland - sorry Gippsland, but I moved to Castlemaine.

I was like, I'll still live in Melbourne and I'll just keep it as my weekend retreat -- for about 2 months. And then I was like, no, I want to be here. I really want to be here.

I literally was laying in bed, not going to work because I'd called in sick, because I didn't want to drive to Melbourne -- already. And I was like, OK, if you're not going to do that then you're going to spend the day looking for jobs. I put "disability and inclusion, Bendigo" in the search and the first job that came up was running a disability and inclusion program for the City of Greater Bendigo.

I was like, that is my job! I rang them up and I said, this is my job, you need me! And they agreed.

I'm a big believer in: Put out in the world what you want. The universe isn't trying to trip you over. It's trying to get you to where you need to be.

♡˖ EVENTS ˖♡

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