As music festivals collapse, one Geelong kid’s hobby has turned into a big day out.

On a recent Saturday night, opposite one Geelong car dealership and across the road from another, a kind of well-natured insanity took place. 

In a room that had developed its own fuggy microclimate, limbs flew at wild angles. 

Moisture dripped from everything. 

Chaos and catharsis collided. So too, bodies. 

Those that fell down were immediately hoisted back up. 

Black and white photo of musician on stage singing in front of lively audience with someone crowdsurfing over hands Eddy Current Suppression Ring performing at the 2026 Jerkfest.

 (Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)

On stage, Brendan Huntley gasped out the words to Insufficient Funds, one of Eddy Current Suppression Ring’s enduring anthems for an economically demoralised generation. 

Black and white photo of man with microphone standing atop lively audience in an indoor music venue Eddy Current Suppression Ring performing at the 2026 Jerkfest.

 (Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)

“There’s no money there! No money there!” he wailed, as if every syllable was being wrung out of him. 

Black and white photo of man with microphone standing in amongst lively audience in an indoor music venue Eddy Current Suppression Ring performing at the 2026 Jerkfest.

 (Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)

“In… SUH… FISH… ENT!! Insufficient funds!”

All the while, the man responsible for organising the chaos looked on serenely. 

Day jobs and big dogs

A fortnight earlier, Billy Gardner was organising products on warehouse shelves at his 9am-5pm with much the same expression. 

“I’m quite content working my day job,” he said. 

Man wearing white shirt and jeans stands on a stool reaching into large shelf of records inside vast warehouse Billy Gardner at his day job in Melbourne.(ABC News: Jeremy Story Carter)

On the perimeters of his day, the 33-year-old runs a record label called Anti Fade, a quietly influential catalogue of typically loud music, alongside the alternative festival Jerkfest in Geelong, where he grew up.

It could be argued that neither matter to a lot of people, but to a few people, they matter a lot. 

“He’s absolutely one of the biggest and most important supporters of anything I have done,” said Buzz Clatworthy from Sydney band RMFC, who last year toured around Europe.

“If it wasn’t for Jerkfest, we wouldn’t have got the audience we have. It matters a lot more to me than any of those bigger festivals.”

Black and white photo of a chaotic music event with a young man crowdsurfing across a lively crowd A crowd-surfer at the festival.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)Black and white photo of a chaotic music event with a young man crowdsurfing across a lively crowd A crowd-surfer at the festival.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)Black and white photo of a chaotic music event with a young man crowdsurfing across a lively crowd A crowd-surfer at the festival.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)

As those bigger festivals collapse, prompting a national conversation around whether such models can work in the current economic and cultural climate, Jerkfest cheerily celebrated its 11th year (it would have been 12, were it not for the pandemic).

Its 550 or so attendees are a fraction of the thousands needed to make most major music festivals sustainable (so too its sub-$90 ticket cost). 

Man with sunglasses walks past a chalk sign outside a pub on a street corner that reads Jerkfest Sold Out Venue The festival is held just down the road from Geelong’s Kardinia Park stadium.(ABC News: Jeremy Story Carter)

Unlike the disastrously cancelled 2026 Bluesfest though, there are no stubby holder manufacturers left holding $65,000 of unsellable stock – no thousands of punters with ruined Easter plans who don’t know if they will ever get their money back. 

If there is a seemingly unsustainable element, it’s the cost of individual effort. 

The time dedicated to both the label and festival could easily represent a full-time job for the now Melbourne-based Gardner, but he insists on characterising it as a “hobby”. 

Black and white photo of man stands smiling with hands on table of music and band merchandise inside a pub Billy Gardner manning the Jerkfest merch desk in 2023.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)Black and white photo of woman on drums smiling while on stage Melbourne band The Prize playing in 2023.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)Black and white photo of lots of younger people sitting on an outdoor staircase and gathering near a music stage A crowd gathers on the stairs and outside at the barn stage.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)Black and white photo of man wearing glasses and shirt holding guitar on stage Buzz Clatworthy from Sydney band RMFC.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)Black and white photo of band on stage, with a female on tambourine next to a drummer and guitarist before a lively stage RMFC playing in 2021.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)

Kate Berry, who has run the independent OK Motels festival in the regional Victorian town of Charlton for a decade, wishes it didn’t have to be this way.

“It just drives me nuts all the time,” she said. 

“The big dogs sit at the top of the pile and do the least amount of work. 

“People like Billy and the bands that drive to Geelong with their freaking [gear] in their boot are eating packet noodles.”

In a country sometimes guilty of valuing its music culture after the fact, Berry thinks it should still be possible to make some sort of living from music in the moment (it only very occasionally is).

Black and white photo of a man in punk clothing napping in a corner of a live music venue next to an open door A punter takes a break.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)

For those involved in the type of counterculture that Jerkfest embodies, it’s not that they have now given up on the idea of making money. 

They never tried – or even imagined it in the first place. 

“I just think if you’re coming to the music industry to make money, you come into it for the wrong reasons,” said Gardner, who appears in a number of bands involved in the scene. 

A sign that reads 'No Drinks I am Not a coaster' taped to the back of a stack of speakers behind a live music stage The festival has two stages running throughout the day.(ABC News: Jeremy Story Carter)

If there is an absence of any economic prosperity in such an approach, it is nonetheless rich in community. 

“A lot of those bigger festivals try and be everything for everyone, that’s why they end up folding. They’re not created by someone who could be on stage later that night,” said Berry.

“Billy is a true champion of his community – that’s why it works. 

“There’s no line between who is on stage and who is watching, they are all peers.”

Geetroit Rock City

An hour or so south west of Melbourne, Geelong is definitionally a city, even if there’s an underdog streak to parts of its culture.

“Geelong’s got a great history of rock’n’roll,” said Grant Gardner. 

“We’re hardcore in Geelong. It’s been that way for a real long time.”Black and white photo of man dancing next to a table amid a packed crowd A Geelong local known as Dancing Tony.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)

Before he was Billy’s dad, Grant Gardner could be found on bass as part of revered late-1980s Geelong punks Bored. 

“In the very early days, we were just wild,” he chuckled. 

“We had this rock’n’roll army of kids, they were just full on. If anything bad was said about us, straight away they’d swarm on that person.”

There are scratchy, raucous archival recordings online of his band playing at the Barwon Club Hotel. 

More than three decades later, he sat in the same pub’s front bar, beaming at the sold-out crowd his son had brought together.

Two men stand smiling with arm around each other in busy beer garden Billy and Grant Gardner.(ABC News: Jeremy Story Carter)

“In the very early days, he was telling me about this concept and I’m going, ‘You’re joking me. How are you gonna pull this off?,'” said Grant Gardner.  

“But someone’s gotta do it. I’m very proud.”

That the festival carries forward the local music legacy in Geelong, rather than try its luck in Melbourne or Sydney, is more than part of the charm. 

Attendees travel from interstate and regional areas, or on the V-Line from Melbourne. 

“Time to head back to Geetroit Rock City,” read one comment on Instagram, riffing off the KISS song and related movie about Detroit. 

Crucially, it also attracts a growing contingent of younger fans from Geelong.

Black and white photo of a woman holding a megaphone on stage behind a microphone Melbourne afro-disco band Wrong Way Up at Jerkfest 2025.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)Black and white photo of a Japanese guitarist wearing a leather jacket, no shirt and sunglasses inside on a stage Japan’s Guitar Wolf at last year’s festival.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)

Twenty-two bands this year played across the pub’s two stages – as soon as a set finished on one, the other started. 

“The festival, Anti Fade and Billy were my introduction to the greater Geelong band scene,” said photographer Jamie Wdziekonski, who has been documenting Jerkfest since 2017.

Tattoo on a woman's arm that reads My Fist Your Face A tattoo on Bridie Coughlin’s arm.(ABC News: Jeremy Story Carter)Woman with blond hair wearing black stands on outdoor staircase with crowd beneath her Geelong music booker Bridie Coughlin.(ABC News: Jeremy Story Carter)

“Some of these bands, we’re kind of capturing at the right time,” said Bridie Coughlin, a venue booker who worked at the pub for over a decade.

“Give it another year, and some of these bands will move on to bigger capacity venues, bigger festivals. Billy is really good at catching bands just before they kind of explode.”

It’s not total hyperbole. 

Black and white photo of woman standing back of music stage Amyl and the Sniffers playing Jerkfest in 2018.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)Black and white photo of woman singing bending backwards next to male guitarist Amyl and the Sniffers playing Jerkfest in 2018.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)Black and white photo of a chaotic music event with woman climbing over lively crowd Amyl and the Sniffers playing Jerkfest in 2018.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)

In 2018, Amyl and the Sniffers played in the outside barn-like stage, and would have headlined the COVID-cancelled festival in 2020.

Now they play to tens of thousands around the world, support AC/DC at the MCG, and shut down Federation Square. 

“I used to help scout bands to get them to play and try and convince Melbourne bands that Geelong was worth coming to. Now people beg Billy to play,” said his friend and sometimes bandmate Jake Robertson.

“The important part is finding bands that are new, or doing something different.”

It’s the type of teeth-cutting that might once have taken place in the homes of younger people.

Even that has started to feel out of reach.

“People can’t afford to live in houses that could be a house party house,” said Robertson.

“I haven’t played a house party for 10 years.”

Black and white photo of woman standing at microphone on stage Late 1970s Melbourne band Essendon Airport performing at Jerkfest.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)Black and white photo of a drummer with only his eyes visible behind a drum kit A drummer at Jerkfest.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)Black and white photo of man standing at microphone on stage performing. Late 1970s Melbourne band Essendon Airport performing at Jerkfest.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)

To those involved, it only underscores why such spaces – where community can form, congregate and evolve – have become more vital than ever. 

“It feels so important to maintain that connection and keep the culture thriving down there,” said Mikey Young from Eddy Current Suppression Ring. 

An expectant energy confronted each of the day’s acts – whether the freshly formed menace of Station Model Violence, Melbourne Afro-disco group Wrong Way Up or 1980s indie pop scrappers The Cannanes.

Black and white photo of band on stage, with two guitarists either side of a drummer, all playing their instruments Sydney’s RMFC have toured extensively around the US and Europe.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)Black and white photo of a chaotic music event with a young man crowdsurfing across a lively crowd A crowd-surfer at the festival.(Supplied: Jamie Wdziekonski)

“Every time we play it’s like the best show we’ve ever done,” said RMFC’s Buzz Clatworthy, who grew up in the coastal NSW town of Ulladulla. 

“There’s such a specific energy to playing here.”

That energy can at times feel overwhelming – like the whole venue might just explode. 

Then, the tension breaks, rippling out to a joyous form of release.

“Every year has a lot of moments,” said Billy Gardner. 

“I’m just there, smiling.”

Credits

Reporting, production and additional photography: Jeremy Story Carter

Photography: Jamie Wdziekonski