On Melbourne’s Nicholson Street – also home to another northside landmark, the 96 tram – is one of the city’s most beloved institutions. An embodiment of this great town. Not a building but a whole personality. Triple R is a community radio station that has, since its origins at RMIT in 1976, done exactly what it says on the box: been part of the community.
Clem Bastow, Christos Tsiolkas and Casey Bennetto are Superfluity, punching earholes on 102.7 FM and online from 8pm every Tuesday. I’m talking to them because I want to trick them into being my friends but also because this year they broadcast their 500th episode after 12 years on the air. An astounding feat by anyone’s standards, but also testament to how large this station has loomed in their lives for decades.
“We call it community radio because someone at some point was like, the community puts this radio station to air,” Bastow says. “But what I take from it is that it’s radio that provides a sense of community, too.”
Tsiolkas – who is, like his co-hosts, also a great writer – tells the story of being a young boy feeling isolated in the suburbs. “Finding it on the dial was revelatory,” he says. “I liked it because of the music, but it was also the first time I heard someone say there’s going to be a gay and lesbian rally, there will be a rally about apartheid. It was a sense of, ‘It’s down the road, it’s in my city, it’s in my place.’ I could be part of it.”
Heaps of us share that experience. Although the station is Brunswick-adjacent, and therefore subject to jokes about cold-drip coffee and cycling along Merri Creek, it’s part of everyday life for people from Craigieburn to Pakenham. Who among us hasn’t been driving in the suburbs and seen someone else with a Triple R sticker and thought, “My people!” as though we are not middle-aged and eating something we found in the glove compartment?
Superfluity is – in the way most Triple R shows are – part music and part education. Its origins are in the beloved tradition of mix tapes and your dad making you watch something he found on YouTube. Tsiolkas says Casey came to him and said: “What do you think about us doing a show that’s based around what happens when you’re with good friends and you all love music, and someone goes, ‘I’m going to play this piece of music,’ and you go, ‘That reminds me of something else. Can I put on the record?’”
They call it “free association radio”, where someone plays a track, and it triggers another host to play a related track. The “related” element can be as loose as it likes. A word in common, a tune from the same decade, or something that was also playing at an uncle’s wedding in 1993.
Choices change at the last minute. Old tracks are given new life. Songs feed deeply hidden moments from the past.
“There’s no context,” Bastow says. “It gives us the opportunity to play a lot of stuff that we maybe wouldn’t play if we were presenting an afternoon drive show. It’s a great opportunity to play a Gold FM track and then queue up something incredibly new and cool, and go somewhere else entirely.”
It’s a timeless premise that means the show is different every time. Bennetto, a legendary Melbourne musician, even writes a new theme song for every episode (unless he doesn’t). In that way it’s kind of a snapshot of the whole station – a wonderful mix of pretty much anything, ready to shock you into loving something you didn’t know about five minutes ago.
After so many shows (Tsiolkas and Bennetto are Superfluity OGs, and Bastow has been on air in different ways at the station for 20 years), all three hosts still get excited about being in the studio together.
Not just for the jokes or celebrity but because, at the risk of terrible cliche, Triple R is part of the tapestry of things. It’s identifiably Melbourne. Its programming blend of science, music, talkback, politics and ghost stories captures something of the purpose of the city, installing it alongside lunch on the State Library lawn and seeing your maths teacher drunk on a tram.
Of course, September in Melbourne is not just finals footy – it’s also Radiothon, the station’s annual donation drive (prizes, prizes, prizes!). With no funding outside sponsor messages, this is how Triple R stays on air. Every year, the community – in this city and beyond – digs deep to support an institution that’s more like a friend.
“I’ve been a presenter for nearly 20 years and I still get a buzz when I’ve subscribed during Radiothon and someone reads my name out,” Bastow says, “I’m famous for 30 seconds.
“That says a lot about how important the station is in all our lives. Just because we present on it doesn’t mean we’re not also listeners.”
