By Phil Jarratt
Every community needs an Oz Bayldon. Or someone very like him.
The ragtag kid I first met pumping gas at his mum’s Noosaville servo more than 30 years ago has been shocking us all with the sheer audacity of his achievements as an extreme rocker and super fundraiser all over the world for decades now, but few of his accomplishments are as dear to him as the fact that the Noosa Yacht and Rowing Club’s fantastic Sailability program for the disabled sails on for another year, thanks to a $10,000 donation from Oz’s Noosa Come Together Festival.
Of course, raising the money was a team effort, with the Yachtie itself and major sponsor Laguna Real Estate deep in the mix, but the glue that binds it all together is the energetic Oz, now 50 and showing no signs of slowing down. The personal journey of the loveable larrikin from wannabe punk rock star at 15 to world famous extreme daredevil and London gig wizard at 30 to entrepreneur and philanthropist at 50 is well documented – in fact Noosa Today put him on the cover in 2019 with Abbey Cannan’s lovely profile of him inside – but I need a brief recap, so Oz and I repair to the clubhouse and grab a cold beer.
The Sailablility regatta is just finishing as we take our seats overlooking the river, and the competitors are coming ashore grinning from ear to ear. “Isn’t it just fantastic to see what a charge this gives them!” says Oz. “This is how my involvement began, but you know, until today I’d never actually seen a full regatta.”
He continues: “When I was in London I got deeply involved in charity work, and when I came back to Noosa in 2014 I started working here at the club, while I was trying to sort out what I’d do next. One day I saw the guys getting off the boats as a Sailability day ended with big grins on their faces just like we’re looking at now, and I thought I’d really like to get involved. Then the sailing director came up the club stairs and said, that’s it, the last one. No more funds. I said, keep it going, and I’ll find the money. That’s how Noosa Come Together started. I expected the first one to break even and we’d move on from there, but the first year we raised $10,000 for Sailability, and we’ve gone on from there.”
Come Together had its beginnings when Oz was managing pubs and gig venues in London’s tough Brixton.
He says: “I had a venue with 28 rooms for homeless families upstairs, and a music venue, a recording studio and a radio station downstairs – all of this for gang kids and their families, all free. Because I had this base, a lot of other charities started coming to me, people working in similar realms, so I said, why don’t we all come together? So we started Brixton Come Together, and Kathmandu Come Together followed.”
Kathmandu was also where Oz’s extremist fundraising scaled new heights, literally. There to perform at a music festival, he wandered the streets and saw so many homeless children that he decided to fund an orphanage, as you do if you’re Oz! To raise the money he and a group of supporters trekked to the top of Mera Peak in the Himalayas and performed the world’s highest gig (6545 metres) for a dozen sherpas.
Other gigs for other charities followed, and he soon also had world records for longest gig, highest canyon swing and coldest gig (-10 degrees at Mount Snowdown in Wales).
He says: “It’s just a great way to make money. If I do something up a mountain I’ve got five years’ worth of fundraising done. It beats selling raffle tickets in the pub, and I’ve done that too!”
A couple of recent record attempts have come unstuck because of Covid, including an attempt to reclaim the longest gig record by playing for 65 hours nonstop while sailing down the Amazon, as part of Amazon Come Together.
And a project he told Noosa Today about in 2019 – to perform on top of a hot air balloon, then jump off and keep playing while parachuting onto a stage far below to finish the gig – is still on the drawing board. “Sunrise Show is interested in covering it,” Oz enthuses. Well, they would be, wouldn’t they!
But he is also the master of more modest fundraising ideas. “This year we put $10 in an envelope and you put your name on the front. Whoever wins gets half the pot. That raised $2500 on the day. As it goes on, we work out new ways to raise money and get people involved.”
Money raised by Noosa Come Together not only funds Sailability but also the sponsorship of horses for Riding For The Disabled at North Arm ($5000 this year), plus a private fund for emergency care for disabled people facing problems.
Says Oz: “I want to turn Come Together into the biggest all-inclusive festival in Australia. It’s not just about raising money for disability, it’s about engaging them, having them perform in various sports and other pursuits. Next year I want to take over the Yacht Club car park and turn it into an arena and have all their sports on show for everyone to see. I’m hoping to do maybe three Come Togethers a year – one for disability, one for domestic violence and one for the charities we support in Nepal.”
It’s a big ask, but with the pandemic curtailing his duties as operations manager for the Gympie Muster, Oz is up for it.
