Listen to the interview we did on the ABC about the move. The interview took place on Tuesday 3 February 2026 with Fiona Parker from the ABC and Brett Adie from PhoenixFM.
Interview Transcript
Fiona Parker: 26 minutes away from the 9 o’clock news and look let’s talk community radio. I think it’s easy to underestimate the importance of community radio to communities. Certainly if you’re around Castlemaine you’d know how important your local community radio station is and Phoenix FM, one of Bendigo’s most popular community radio stations, stood in for ABC Central Victoria when our transmitter was down during the recent bushfires. So that was certainly very, very important as they kindly lent us their transmitter. So I guess it does, you know, really accentuate how important community radio is.
But Phoenix FM, that’s the one based on Reservoir Road in Strathdale, their lease is up with Bendigo Council, but also, as I understand it, the building’s damaged. So let’s find out more as they desperately try and find a new home. Brett Adie is a presenter and programmer at Phoenix FM. Welcome to the studio here in Bendigo.
Brett Adie: Yeah, thank you, Fiona. It’s nice to be back.
FP: Yeah, good to see you. What’s actually happened?
BA: So, look, we knew that there was always going to be a point in time when we’d probably have to get out of that building. It’s a very old building. Everyone knows it. It’s like one of the ugliest buildings in Bendigo, really.
FP: It’s what’s inside that counts.
BA: Exactly, exactly. It was the heart that was beating inside it that was important. But what happened was we got to a point where we need to start thinking about other premises.
It all got fast-tracked a little bit when, in November, we had a small minibus hit the side of the building. In a quite low-speed accident, no harm to anyone in the vehicle, and, I mean, in a way… You know, we work so hard. We have programs that are about supporting people with disability and the like, and it was actually a disability bus that hit it. So it was sort of like, yeah, it was quite ironic, really, how that worked out, because we work so hard to provide shows for people with disability and the like.
But anyway, that sort of got to the point. And look, we fully understand. I know there was a bit of on socials the other day when we first announced a bit of angst out there. But we fully understand. Like, we’re taxpayers as well in this town. We don’t want the council spending money on a building that is, you know, probably needs to go. And we know that area has been zoned as parkland anyway. So we fully understood. It’s just we’ve got to move quickly.
We effectively, at some stage in the next two months, we’re expecting a letter and from that day we’ll have 90 days.
FP: So is it structurally unsound then due to that damage or would it just require a lot of work?
BA: A lot of work.
FP: Right, okay.
BA: And on a building in that, really.
FP: Yeah, is old.
BA: Yeah, it’s not fit for purpose anyway, but we made it work.
FP: Yeah, totally. You absolutely did. I drive past there all the time and you often see the cars or you see the minibus outside and you know the presenters are in there volunteering their time to share their passion, whether it be country music or… What do you present on Phoenix FM, Brett?
BA: I’ve got three shows, actually.
FP: Of course you do.
BA: I’ve got one that’s called Aussie Drive. It actually originates here in Bendigo, but that’s broadcast around the country on the community radio network, so that’s all brand-new Australian music.
FP: Oh, CBAA.
BA: People like Radio Fremantle, Lofty FM, all these other stations that then broadcast that. Really great outlet for our local musos because I play a lot of Bendigo music on that show that then gets played nationally. We have a show actually in competition to you tomorrow morning, Fiona. Keith McQueen and I do a show called The Fat, which is all about talking about local community stuff.
FP: Don’t tune into that, though. Listen to ABC Central Victoria.
BA: We have very long chats on that, so only if you’re up for a very long chat, we’ll give them an hour. And then one of my proudest ones, which actually has a bit of attention around the country as well, is one called Live Music Bendigo on a Saturday afternoon, which is all about local live music scene. And we’ve had, like, I think we’re up to about 160 different music guests in there in less than two years in that studio, and some played live, so…
FP: Wow, love it. Now, Brett, this is Rebecca in Horsham. Just wanted to know, though, of course, it’s a lot of expense to have to move, but have you been able to find a location? What sort of building are you looking for to be able to set up in?
BA: Yeah, look, our committee met last night and we formed a subcommittee, which I’ll be the chair of. And what we’ve done is come up with our minimum requirements, basically, which is quite a long list, as you’d understand, working in a radio station yourself. There’s a lot of things that we need to make sure that we’ve got on board.
We haven’t even got to that point. Of course, as soon as the phone started ringing almost straight away last Wednesday when we put it out there to say, everyone go on, how about this place? How about that place? There’s a lot of work needs to be done to actually find what is the best fit that’s available in the community. And of course, there’s the cost side of it. I mean, for us as a community radio station, we go out there and just pay normal commercial rates. We’re looking at 25 grand a year.
FP: So what’s been the arrangement with council? Yeah.
BA: Yeah, we haven’t been paying any rent, but we sort of see that as we were contributing quite a bit to them in that we broadcast their council meetings every month. We also have their representative from that comes in, talks in the studio with us. But we’ve also done a lot of outside broadcast for the council as well over the last few years in particular.
And so we sort of thought we would give him back quite a bit. Oh, and we will continue to do that. We’re not sort of saying, no, we’re not doing that now because we’re all about community.
FP: Have council given you any other options of buildings they could provide for you or not?
BA: They did give a couple, but they didn’t quite fit. And, you know, basically working from that list last night that we went through, yeah, those couple of offers that we had certainly didn’t fit within that.
FP: Why?
BA: Oh, proximity to town is one. We need actually be in a place where we have line of sight to Specie Hill. So that was the reason why we were able to keep going through the fires was because we’re located on Specie Hill.
FP: Specimen Hill, just to be clear, if you want to look it up on Google Maps.
Okay, so that’s one thing that you need. You obviously need the best space for all of the equipment and the rack room and everything that you need to run a radio station, as well as one would hope fit-for-purpose toilet facilities and all of that and accessibility as well. So what is the plan then? If you’re saying you need to rent a commercial building, where do you find, did you say 25 grand?
BA: Well, that’s if we end up at that. Our hope is that we can find maybe a community group that we can partner with, that we might be able to go into that premises. So everything is out there. We’re open to any suggestions at the moment. And we’ve set up an email… where people can contact us now and let us know if they’ve got any ideas. We’d like people to do a little bit of the work themselves, like rather than just sending us an address and say, try this place, tell us a little bit about it. What’s the story behind it? Just give us a little bit of info that we can work with. And then we will, as a committee, the subcommittee, we’ll work through that and work out what’s the best fit for the station.
FP: And I guess because it’s very expensive to actually move a station, re-establish a station, you want to go somewhere that you can stay for a long, long time, don’t you? It doesn’t cost too much in Rent I’d imagine?
BA: No.Exactly. Well, we’re hoping we can find something that doesn’t cost anything, right? But that’s the ideal situation.
FP: You’ll end up doing fundraising drives like, you know, the triple R and PBS in Melbourne.
BA: We were out doing sausages on Sunday at a bunning. So we do that all the time. So, yeah, we’re looking at a minimum of five years that we can be in there. By the time you move all the tech and everything, Huge, huge job.
FP: We are talking this morning to Brett Adie, who is a presenter and programmer at Phoenix FM in Bendigo, who, as I mentioned, kindly lent us their transmitter after the one on Mount Alexander was badly damaged by fire, which was the one that, of course, broadcasts ABC Central Victoria.
Jan in Bendigo has texted in, a big thanks to Phoenix FM for all their work after the fires. Thank you, Jan, for your text. Yeah, so she certainly knew.
BA: Yeah, we got a lot of that feedback when we were at Bunnings on Sunday, people coming up from the Harcourt region or just from Bendigo itself or Castlemaine and just indicating how thankful they were for the work we’d done.
FP: So what happens next? You said there was a meeting last night. You’ve set up what, like a group to try and spearhead?
BA: Yeah, some internal, some external people because we’re still going to do BAU, business as usual. We’re still going to go. So we’re going to try and draw in those resources that we got within the station plus some other people and we will pull that together. We want to go back to our committee of management within three to four weeks with a list of possible venues or premises that we could… pretty much slot into we know we’re going to have to spend some money fitting it out i mean you know here we’ve got soundproofing all sorts of things that go on so it’ll take some time to fit it out.
FP: Has Bendigo Council offered any support? Yeah, they’ve been good so far. They said to us, write back to them, we will reach out to them. There’s a grant process and everything that we can go through. And there is some options like that. But look, if anyone wants to donate a premises, [email protected]. Send your email there and we’ll make contact and go from there.
FP: [email protected].
Or get in touch with us. We’ve got Brett’s deets. Brett, thank you for that update. Keep in touch, won’t you?
BA: Yeah, will do. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Fiona, thanks Rebekah.
Finding a new premises. That’s Brett Aide from Phoenix FM. Interesting stuff. And I suppose also, you know, at this time when you figure out just how important a radio service is through emergencies.
Rebekah Lowe :Definitely. Yeah. Definitely, definitely. And a huge effort for them having to move and all that. Having been involved with community radio myself, it’s a very, very huge thing they’ve got to do financially as well. So good luck to them. Hopefully they get it all sorted out as soon as possible.
FP: Yeah, too true.