The next fabulous
Valla Beach Ukulele Camp
will be on
10, 11 & 12 October, 2025
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Watch here as performers and workshop leaders are added.
WOOHOO! It's the Tuck Shop Ladies for 2025!
Dance the night away with Lindy and the Loose Units in 2025!
Under construction for 2025
Jack 'n Jel
At home Mark and Jane (their real names) run 9 weekly ukestra/choir sessions (i.e. post covid), and they also have built an international reputation for ukestration workshops, helping community ukulele groups to develop their musicianship and joy beyond hum n strum. They deliver festival ukulele workshops that engage both beginner and experienced players in fun and dynamic arrangements of contemporary songs.
Dennis Wilson & Brenda Leseuer
As a team Dennis and Brenda, bring two lifetimes of musical expertise to music tutoring.
Between them they have:
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combined professional teaching experience of 96 years in public and private school systems, TAFE, Conservatoria, U3A and private studios.
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127 years of experience with music.
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Expertise playing a host of instruments: trumpet, trombone, saxophone and every other brass instrument, piano, voice, harp and of course, various ukuleles.
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International experience playing with Ukestralia in New Zealand and Hawaii.
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Conducting and training brass bands, choirs and Big Sings as well as ukulele groups and workshops.
Qualifications: B.A. Dip. Ed; B.A (Music) and Master of Philosophy (Early Music) pending )
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Brenda and Dennis will be running the Absolute Beginners program in Saturday and Sunday mornings. Dennis will also be performing with Blue Gum Blossom opening the Friday Night Celebrity Concert.
Cathy plays all sizes of ukulele, harp ukulele and banjo uke, as well as stick dulcimer, 5 string banjo, guitar, percussion, piano and keyboard. She was a founding member and inaugural president of the Australian Ukulele Teachers and Leaders Association (AUTLA). She holds a Level 3 James Hill Ukulele Teacher's accreditation, a Mistress of Education degree and was a Project Officer for the New England Conservatorium of Music. She recently developed two ukulele-based education programs which she is currently presenting to schools and pre-schools in northern Tasmania. Cathy teaches the Valla Beach Garage Band and Blue Gum Blossom Jazz uke Ensemble.
Review from Michael Fine at Troubadour Folk Club Event on 29 May 2021.
We billed it as a night of 'Creative Singer-Songwriters with Ukulele, at the Everglades'. But it deserved much more. Those of us lucky enough to have been there will remember this evening for a long time. A room full of laughter. Inspiring performances. Great original songs! And sharing that deep feeling of intimacy between audience and performers that only the most special events can ever produce.
The Wild Women were a hoot from the start. But cleverly, as we were lulled into the comfort of laughter and shared enjoyment, they began to get deeper and deeper in their reflection on what it means to be treated as a older woman, and how to respond to it. Cleverly, their message was about older blokes as well. They played some quite demanding instrumentals which I think went well beyond folk music. I thought of them as mini symphonic sketches, on the ukuleles. The lasting memories I have is of the joy they have and their rebellious embrace of gender and ageing. These are two women who are determined make the world a better place, one witty line and clever key change at a time.
Angie is a music historian with a Mistress of Education (Hons) and PhD (Education). She specialises in working with ukulele Beginners and Seniors, as well as in repertoire development, workshop exercises, songwriting and strum techniques. An experienced teacher, she brings to her workshops a unique understanding of the learning process together with ample patience and a firm belief in the ability of humans to learn. Her broad musical knowledge and ongoing research enable her to offer a wide range of workshops including beginners, strum techniques, rhythmic picking, twelve bar blues, Latin rhythms, Songs of the 20s, 30s and 40s, Hollywood Hawaiian, Great Movie Songs, and Australian, Gypsy, Scottish and Irish folk songs. She has recently launched into full-on environmental protest songs which are being sung at forest vigils for The Great Koala National Park.
Cathy Welsford & Angie Smith - The Wild Women of Anywhere Beach
Your Ukulele Camp hosts, Cathy (Fast Fingers) Welsford and Angie (Random Chords) Smith have been performing, writing songs and organising community events together for thirty years, singing their way through numerous political upheavals, cultural revolutions and just plain standing up against injustice. They provide high quality ukulele workshops at clubs and festivals up and down the east coast of Australia from Cairns to Tasmania, and are also tutors at Bellingen’s annual Camp Creative. They perform as The Wild Women of Anywhere Beach, interspersing beautifully harmonised original songs with evocative instrumental pieces, outrageous rock and sassy covers. A fearless song-writing duo, they compose contemporary folk ditties documenting the events, issues and celebrations of the times and of their outrageous life experiences. Their long awaited CD, Keep Laughing, Seriously is finally out, now available at festivals, on Spotify and through their website. Their latest CD will be launched at the Beach Camp! www.thewildwomenofanywherebeach.net.​
The Wild Women of Anywhere Beach will be performing with Blue Gum Blossom on Friday night. They will be a part of the Songwriter Session on Saturday morning and launch their new CD in the Saturday evening concert.
Angie will be presenting The Strummers Paradise session on Saturday morning.