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Curating courage with MainFM's Steph Riddel

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The Nugget
August 29, 2025

★ Curating courage with MainFM’s Steph Riddel ★

Super star radio boss and DJ Steph Riddel

By Richard Mcleish

It was in a graffiti-soaked backstreet of Collingwood in the early 2000s that Steph Riddel faced her creative crossroads – a moment that would go on to define her ethos that now permeates through MainFM where she reigns as the station manager.

Fresh off the plane from Brisbane, a young Steph landed on the north side of Melbourne and quickly fell in with the creatives through sharehouse living and partying. Community radio had been her saving grace growing up in rural Queensland, and she threw caution to the wind and enrolled in the PBS FM announcer training program. The final assessment being a demo tape of a show - something an experienced presenter could do in their sleep, but no small task to a noob beginning their radio journey. 

And in that moment between finishing the demo and handing it through the red doors on Easey Street, the recording was lost in a tangle of self doubt and subversion that laced the era. 

Looking back on it now, Steph says she curses herself for hesitating. But Melbourne can be an intimidating place for a regional rocker from FNQ. Instead she bottled the sentiment, and went on to let it shape her role as Station Manager of Castlemaine’s MainFM. 

I spoke long and hard with programming manager Rich Moffat about removing the barriers of entry for presenters, she says. And since embracing an open door policy, the programming grid of the station has never been fuller. Presenters range across ages, backgrounds, sexual and gender orientations, political ideology, ability, ableness – all making up the distinct voice of the broad church that is MainFM.

The road to Castlemaine can be windy and indirect. But maybe it’s no accident that people like Steph gravitate towards it. That pang of hesitation in her early years fighting for a voice in Melbourne has led to the heightened accessibility of MainFM, one of the town’s great community organisations. And we’re all the better for it.

“Courage is contagious,” asserts one of the murals at The Mill. Perhaps it’s audible too.

❀ Sunday Roast Love ❀

Sending a biiiiig thank you to Love Shack for sorting out Father’s Day and Sunday dinners in general. If you are on the hunt for a nice dad outing for next weekend, book in! See you there. x

♡˖ EVENTS ˖♡

𖥔 TALK TO MOI PLOISE 𖥔

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