Small Wollongong venues set bar high

There was no shortage of pubs and clubs to drink at, but the scene was limited to anyone willing to squeeze into a very short, very tight dress with platform heels and those willing to wail Cold Chisel songs into a microphone after midnight.

Brawls at venues and on the street were a regular sight. The savagery of these fights had only increased in recent years.

God forbid someone leaving a movie or performance at the IPAC might want a quiet drink or a bite to eat. Nowhere that served decent food was open, and the venues that were available, usually offering discounted shots, didn't readily appeal to an over-25 crowd.

Typical Wollongong nightlife after 8pm was recently described as "meat markets frequented by cashed-up bogans" by live music supporter Warren Wheeler.

He might have copped a lot of flak for his comment, but the overwhelming support for change in the city's nightlife only backed up his sentiment.

Generations of Illawarra revellers chasing a better night out in Sydney faced the logistical dilemma: Cut the fun short and make the crucial last train at midnight or wait hours on a platform awash in vomit until the trains start at 4am.

Neither option appealed to Ben Tillman, Balunn Jones and Adam Smith, so they decided to bring the party closer to home instead.

"While we were going to uni, Wollongong nightlife sucked and we got sick of always going to the city and having to make that last train home," remembers Tillman.

"We didn't know what to do with our lives, we loved the area, we wanted to stay and we wanted to give the Gong something we didn't have when we were younger."

It was from these humble beginnings that one of Wollongong's first small bars, Yours and Owls, was born.

Tillman, Jones and Smith graduated from gigs thrown in their sharehouse "The Liberteen Ranch" to establish a small cafe on Crown Street that accidentally became a beacon for small bar culture in Wollongong .

Alongside The Little Prince (formerly Otis), Yours and Owls is credited as one of the first venues that proved a small bar scene was economically viable in a post-industrial steel city.

The trio had never intended to be the vanguard of Wollongong small-bar culture.

"I think it was just timing for us. It was going to happen at some point and we were just lucky, but it's cool we got in at the start," Tillman said.

It was a steep learning curve, according to Tillman.

"It started out as a cafe, we had no idea what we were doing, the fit-out was ridiculous and none of us even knew how to make coffee."

Partly out of excitement and partly because they couldn't afford to stay shut, the boys opened for business without ticking any regulatory boxes.

"We just opened and we got a letter in the mail that if we didn't get a DA or close in two weeks we would be fined $1 million," he said

"We pushed a few boundaries with council and brought issues to attention, but partly because we've naturally gotten into a bit of trouble."

Yours and Owls successfully applied for a liquor licence in 2011, allowing them to extend opening hours and serve refreshments stronger than coffee and muffins.

"After we got the liquor licence things went a bit downhill; we were 23 and we were like: 'Yes we can have our own bar, we can drink whatever whenever we like'," Tillman laughs.

"We got progressively worse at getting up early to do morning shifts."

As the cafe-bar morphed into a late-night live-music venue, 7am starts lost out to 2am finishes.

"We canned the mornings and it was a bit of an accident that we got into being a bar and doing live music," he says.

"It wasn't great because the customers who loved our coffee, who we built up as a cafe for two years, were very different to the live music crowd."

The trio's adventures with touring bands and clashes with council ended abruptly late one night in December 2012.

A 2am car crash on the way to dropping friends off at a party left Tillman with debilitating injuries to the top of his spinal cord.

While the passengers walked away physically unscathed, Tillman was confined to a hospital bed for months and then later to a wheelchair while undergoing gruelling physical therapy.

"It was good for me in a way, I was getting carried away with partying and all my priorities became clear," says Tillman.

"I'm more focused, I know what I'm doing now, it's been a good thing."

The three decided to sell the business on the understanding the bar wouldn't be the same without all of the founders being there.

It now belongs to former employee Daniel Radburn, who rechristened it Rad Bar but maintained the same live music commitment.

Rad plays host to an enviable roster of touring bands while being regularly name checked by Australia's most respected music press outlets.

Yours and Owls has now stepped up from filling people's weekend plans to forming music industry infrastructure, hoping to provide jobs and opportunity in a region recovering from manufacturing's slow death.

The boys are booking agents for multiple live-music venues in and around the city and have forged a record label, Farmer and the Owl, with Jeb Taylor from music store Music Farmers.

For them it's a way to prevent the next generation of talent from fleeing to big cities.

"A big problem for Wollongong people was the aim to just grow up and get out. It's becoming a desirable area, people are moving down and locals are liking it more and proud to be from here," says Tillman.

"They can see you can make a good life here. For me it was about staying in an awesome area by creating a sustainable industry."

Yours and Owls is now charged with bringing touring acts to Rad and the UniBar, reviving a flatlining live music scene.

Their sold-out eponymous festival brought Dune Rats, Sticky Fingers and Safia to Wollongong last year, while their 2015 effort has enticed the likes of Jebediah and DZ Deathrays to UOW for the Farmer and the Owl festival taking place in March.

At a time when one of the last bastions of live music in Wollongong, The Oxford Tavern, had become a demolition site, the city's audiences proved they were still ready to listen to live music.

University of Wollongong bar manager Nathan Stratton has noticed the difference between having a local booking agent in the form of Yours and Owls versus the bar's previous Newcastle-based company.

"I like the idea of having local guys, they have their finger on the pulse of what's happening. We've already booked more than twice the amount of gigs in one semester then we had all last year," he says.

With the close of the Oxford Tavern and noise complaints stifling the Cabbage Patch's efforts, Stratton felt the UniBar had big shoes to fill.

With the Oxford's small rooms lying in a rubble, there was a dire need for intimate venues - the kind that enable up-and-coming bands to play financially viable gigs.

"Having a 750-capacity room means we need 300 punters to be viable, so when other venues closed down the UniBar didn't have the ability to fill that [small venue] void," he said.

After Stratton's renovations enabled the space to transform into three different sized venues, UniBar has stepped up as a serious venue once more.

"We were really stoked to have Tillman on board. We're attracting great bands that would never come to Wollongong, they skip us and go straight to Canberra," he said.

While excited for the future, he remains realistic about the hangover of Wollongong's "beer barn" reputation.

"With Jeb from Music Farmers and Tills with Farmer and the Owl, its been fantastic promoting the region. There's really good stuff going on, but people still focus on the sleazy nightclub bad side," he said.

Windang duo Hockey Dad are one of those bands fostered by Rad and other small venues, their recent national exposure at this year's Falls Festival earning them fans from outside the 2500 postcode.

Their EP and follow-up tour was made possible by the Farmer and the Owl label.

A 15-year veteran of Illawarra's live music scene, record shop owner and now joint label owner and festival organiser, Taylor appreciates the influence local councils have over a fledgling creative community.

"I've spent a lot of time in council meetings. They've been fairly supportive recently, they're putting in resources. There are small elements that resist, but in general they're understanding the value now."

The night time culture of the Wollongong CBD has changed utterly over the past five years.

Those opting to stay in Wollongong instead of heading to Sydney can sample tasting plates at His Boy Elroy and 24 types of whisky at Howlin' Wolf before cramming into Rad Bar's walls that tend to shake when the bass is turned up a touch too high.

On intermittent Sundays, Parklife takes over the Hotel Illawarra, pushing polyester and strict dress policies out of the DJ scene and offering something other than remixed top-40 hits blaring on sticky dance floors.

For patrons wishing to remain comfortably seated, bars like Red Square and Little Prince offer unrivalled wine and cocktail selections, along with a place to have conversation without having to yell.

A thriving small bar culture gives Wollongong what capital city inhabitants have always enjoyed: choice.