Come join me for a tour of the wonderful community of Kaarimba, in Col Grinter’s 1925 open top Chevy, with no brakes. Along the way, you’ll learn how to master making a square chocolate cake; how to power up a vintage air conditioner with a car battery & how to dance the Highland Schottische & hopefully live to to tell the tale.

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Will BBAC Theatre Production get the rights to stage ‘Wicked’ in the Yando Hall? Will Yando ever forgive Appin for the infamous 1934 Football melee that left half the team in hospital? Will the hall feature in ‘Australian Counrty Wedding’ magazine, despite having drop toilets? All this & more in the Yando edition of Hall Stories. This is a special one.

To see photos relating to the stories told in the podcast go to … Hall Stories

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The Hall Stories project ventured to Tallygaroopna, Victoria as of part of the 100th birthday celebrations for the hall. I attended the festivities on the Kings Birthday weekend 2024, before returning in July for field research, interviews and to perform the live show. She is an absolute stunner of a hall and as a bonus, there is actually a hall within the hall - an architectural turducken if you like. Turn the urn on for a cuppa, make yourself a mock turkey sandwich and sit down by the fire in the supper room, and have a listen.

Hall Stories is a multi faceted project that I am currently trialing with Riverlinks Theatre and the Shepparton Festival. In the basic format of the project, I perform a live show in a hall, combining my skills as a storyteller, stand-up and character actor, to share from my armoury of war stories from my time performing on the front line in halls across the land. Basically, I pull back the curtain to create a show about the shows. I also theatrically share the quirky characters, bizarre rules, unique traditions and legendary yarns that I’ve acquired from touring across the country. Each hall has a story to tell, and I aim to be the walls that talk, in a socio historical examination of the role halls play in rural Australian life. The performance is augmented by a hilarious collection of golden photo stories that I’ve panned from the alluvial river of regional touring. The collection includes a gallery of overly officious hall signs; marketing miscalculations; municipal missteps and a retrospective of the rustic, recreation reserve. Part of the show and slideshow is curated to each hall.

Hall Stories is me doing what I do best, where I do it best. I know how to talk over a bubbling urn; wind up when the CWA start cutting up the passionfruit sponge and stack the chairs in 5’s at the end of the night. 

‘But wait, there’s more’ … in the deluxe version of Hall Stories, I deliver a fully produced HALL STORIES PODCAST, based entirely on the history, legends, stories, characters and events of an individual hall or venue. The podcast features interviews with historians, local legends, committee members, elders and performers who’ve tread the boards in that very hall. The podcast will form part of a series, as I build a national collection.

The project was recently pitched at the Regional Arts Victoria Showcase, and I am building a mega hall tour for 2025.

Harston Memorial Hall have been the guinea pigs for Episode 1. Make sure you’ve turned the urn off before you leave.

If you’d like to see picture galleries of Harston Memorial Hall, see quirky hall posts and follow the project, you can follow Damian Callinan Hall Stories