Wynnum Fringe kicks off this year’s program on November 16, featuring the Marcia Hines led show Velvet Rewired – a glittering high energy fusion of disco, dance, burlesque and circus.

Each week of the Wynnum festival program has a different theme, with the opening event yana marumba – meaning “walk good” in the local Quandamooka language – honouring the First Nations history of the area with a sunset walk along the foreshore led by giant Elder puppet Janggaburru and Indigenous leaders sharing local language and culture.

Also featuring over three weeks are some of the biggest names in stand-up comedy including Mel Buttle, Damien Power, Luke Heggie and Chris Ryan, and performers such as Diesel, formidable Brisbane based nine-piece Bullhorn and Cabaret queen Dolly Diamond.

The three-week arts, entertainment and cultural extravaganza spans performance genres including music, dance, comedy, theatre, cabaret, burlesque, circus as well as weekend family programming, highlighting Wynnum Fringe’s strong connection to Country and the Bayside’s Indigenous community with First Nations programming such as Dane Simpson’s Digeridoozy.

Another addition this year is the festival hub the Wynnum Fringe Garden on the foreshore at George Clayton Park. The gathering place is home to the Spiegeltent and will host events such as the free family fun day on Saturday November 26 with entertainment from Latina Lane: La Fiesta.

It’s all coordinated by founder, director and local boy Tom OIiver, who after his big national debut on The Voice, dreamt of going overseas to have a crack at the musical scene, but Covid quashed his plans.

“I was actually, in 2020 planning to go to Germany, do this show and then move to London and give the West End a crack as a performer,” he said.

“And then, I was doing a rock show in Australia called, Rolling Thunder Vietnam and we opened our show in Geelong on the Friday and then we closed on the Sunday and then everyone went home.”

So he moved back in with his parents instead, and worked on his idea for a fringe festival on Brisbane’s bayside.

“I came back to my parents’ house in Wynnum, this town that I’ve been trying to get away from for about 10 years, that I thought was the place that I didn’t need to be. I needed London or Sydney or anywhere that wasn’t Wynnum in Brisbane,” he said.

“And then, yeah, I was stuck here and lots of performers had to come back to Brisbane too and I was just bored, running around Wynnum passing the time really, in the however far I could travel from my house rule. And I looked down an alleyway and I was like, we could put a stage down there.

“And then the restrictions in Queensland were easing and all these great performers had come home from gigs interstate and overseas and there was already great performers here.

“It went from concept to opening night in two months, we employed 200 artists and 10,000 people came through Wynnum. Which was just so random, because they hadn’t seen a festival like that.”

He still can’t believe that the festival has grown to become a staple of the bayside in just three years.

“It’s one thing to come up with an idea, but it takes people to attend it for it to keep going,” Oliver said.

“So, I think the Wynnum and the Bayside community of Brisbane are the real heroes here.

“For me, the concept of a Fringe festival in the Bayside was in my head for about two years pre-Covid and it was when I was touring with Velvet to lots of Fringe festivals around the world and I was in these parks and Spiegeltents and pop-up venues and I was always thinking when I was performing there that Wynnum, my hometown has as good, if not better real estate for an event like this.

“They have the grungy laneways, the old car parks, a jetty park space and more so than other Fringe festivals, it has this view of Moreton Bay, which is uninterrupted.”

He recently returned home from performing in a show for a few months in Germany, to ensure the festival he founded runs smoothly.

“The festival needs people to know that we are expanding and that we are a three week event from the 16th of November til the 4th of December, that has free experiences as well as ticketed experiences,” he said.

“And if we’ve done our job right, which I think we have, we will have things for everyone, whether it’s young people, comedy lovers, burlesque lovers.

“It’s a very diverse program and I strongly recommend people give it some time to look through, because there are some excellent artists like Diesel and Dave Hughes and local legends like Lucid Safari and other bands. So I guess just the knowledge that it’s three weeks and that it’s really accessible is a good thing.”