Marcus Webb spent three years watching good bands skip Ballarat entirely. Touring musicians would play Melbourne, then jump straight to Adelaide, leaving a 115-kilometre gap where paying audiences existed but nowhere to put them. So in early 2023, he stopped complaining and started ringing people.
Webb and a handful of other music fans-a graphic designer, a nurse, a bar manager-began hosting live acts in spaces nobody else wanted to touch. They booked the upstairs room at The Terminus on Sturt Street. They negotiated with the owners of the Heritage Hall on Doveton Street. They turned a blank canvas of a venue into something that could host 200 people for a decent show.
The transformation matters now because Ballarat's music scene reflects what happens when people decide to build infrastructure instead of waiting for someone else to. The city of 130,000 people sits close enough to Melbourne to attract touring acts, far enough away that promoters used to write it off as too expensive to bother with. Webb's crew proved that wrong. In the past eighteen months alone, they've hosted acts ranging from folk-pop to electronic music, filling gaps in the regional touring circuit that major promoters had ignored.
From Spare Rooms to Proper Stages
The Terminus sits above a pub in what used to be Ballarat's quietest stretch of Sturt Street. Its upstairs room has timber floors, exposed brick, and a total capacity of 150. When Webb's group first approached the owners in late 2022, the space was used maybe once a month for private functions. Now it hosts live music three to four times a month, with ticket prices ranging from $15 to $35 depending on the act.
Heritage Hall, a weatherboard community building on Doveton Street that dates back to 1912, presented a different challenge. The space had good bones but no sound system, no lighting rig, no stage infrastructure. Webb's volunteer group spent $8,000 over two years buying and installing basic equipment-donated funds from patrons, supplemented by a small grant from Ballarat City Council's arts fund. That investment paid off. The hall now hosts between 80 and 120 people per show.
What separates this crew from other regional promoters is they do it almost entirely for free. Webb still works full-time in marketing. The nurse handles social media in spare hours. The bar manager books acts during her lunch breaks. None of them take a cut. Revenue from ticket sales covers venue hire and artist fees, typically $400 to $800 per show depending on who's playing.
Building Audiences from Zero
Regional live music venues across Australia have struggled since 2020. Mid-sized touring acts-the bands that fill 100-300-seat rooms-face shrinking venues nationwide. Ballarat had almost none. The city's only established music venue, Ballarat Brewing on Dowling Street, focuses on local and emerging acts rather than touring musicians.
The data supports what Webb's group has done. In 2022, Ballarat hosted approximately 12 mid-sized touring acts per year. By 2025, that figure had climbed to 34. Attendance at Heritage Hall and The Terminus combined jumped from 340 people in the first six months of 2023 to 1,840 in the equivalent period this year. Webb tracks all of it in a spreadsheet.
Audience building has been incremental. Webb's first show, in March 2023, drew 26 people to watch a local folk trio. Word spread slowly through social media-they run an Instagram account with 2,100 followers-and via recommendations at pubs and music shops around the CBD. By late 2024, shows regularly sold between 60 and 120 tickets.
If you're thinking about catching a show, the next scheduled acts are listed on Heritage Hall's website and The Terminus's Instagram. Tickets sell out, sometimes weeks ahead. The volunteer team has already started talking to Council about formalising their operation into a registered not-for-profit in 2027, which would unlock more consistent funding and potentially allow them to expand to a third venue on Dana Street.
