For questions about the fabulous 2025
Valla Beach Ukulele Camp,
Contact Cathy: cathywelsford419@gmail.com
To check out what The Wild Women of Anywhere Beach have been up to lately
To look at new instrumental ukulele music from international and Australian composers
YOUR HOSTS
Your Ukulele Camp hosts, the 'almost award winning' The Wild Women of Anywhere Beach, Cathy (Fast Fingers) Welsford and Angie (Random Chords) Smith have been performing, writing songs and organising community events together for nearly 40 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 have also been regular 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 two CDs are available online and a physical copy: yes! CDs are still a thing!
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. Angie also performs with the Valla Beach Garage Band and Blue Gum Blossom Jazz uke Ensemble.
Cathy plays all sizes of ukulele, harp ukulele and banjo uke, as well as stick dulcimer, 5 string banjo, guitar, percussion, accordion, 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. Cathy has published instrumental pieces for solo and ensemble ukulele and she recently developed two educational programs: Music, Literacy and Ukulele for primary schools, and Circle Songs on the Mat: silly songs for music and language learning for kindergarten/pre-schools which she is currently presenting to schools and pre-schools in northern Tasmania. Cathy teaches the Valla Beach Garage Band and performs with Blue Gum Blossom Jazz uke Ensemble.
