FOUR years ago, Jarrod Pickford started an idea in Hamilton to reinvent tourist radio.

He envisioned an audio guide with local perspectives that could make you feel at home in a new town, something you could bring with you anywhere, just like the Lonely Planet travel books he spent years lugging around the globe.

That idea became Storytowns, a mobile phone App with interviews with business owners and local personalities, energetically edited together with a radio producer’s sensibilities. Its geo-located, so the App shows you the guides closest to where you are, and they are organised into touring routes to encourage fully discovering an area.

Mr Pickford grew up in Boorcan, between Terang and Camperdown, and moved to Hamilton with his family when he finished school. Then came a career in radio, voice over, podcasting and international hitchhiking.

“I am a big traveller, I have always travelled for years, it’s all I do, I can’t sit still,” Mr Pickford said.

“I thought, how do we transform tourist radio into something that’s much more accessible, online, easy to find, and designed for travellers?”

The Spectator last spoke to him in late 2020 after he and a small team won grants from AMP Foundation’s Tomorrow Fund, and Warrnambool City Council’s ‘Ideas Place’ to begin work in earnest on Storytowns.

When their first App launched, their audio guides centred on food and wineries in the area surrounding Hamilton, giving owners airtime to tell the unique story of their brand and property.

He and a small team based out of a storefront on Brown Street researched throughout Covid’s first year, putting grant money to use as they designed an audio product that could both capture a traveller’s attention and do justice to the depth of love locals felt about their areas.

“So, we put cameras in people’s cars, we travelled around, we watched to see how they responded to audio,” he said.

“In the last three years it’s just got better and better and better, and this is why we are getting big contracts.”

Now Storytowns has partnered with over 100 communities countrywide.

“We are across Australia now, we have got about 600 audio guides and we plan to do a lot more,” Mr Pickford said.

Local offerings now include narrated journeys along the Grampians Way, the Great Ocean Road, and the Silo Art Trail.

Further afield, there are tours as far apart as Redlands in Brisbane and the Gascoyne in WA.

Last month Storytowns launched the first 47 of 134 audio guides covering every train line and station in Melbourne.

Press play on the Storytowns App to hear a curated set of heartwarming audio interviews that introduce you to each suburb you travel to on your journey.

“I met with an investor a week ago who played with our App on the train to Melbourne who contacted me and said this is great, this could go global – I’m thinking, this was our plan, it wasn’t just Hamilton.”

All along, Mr Pickford’s intention has been to go from a regional Victorian startup to a cutting-edge international traveller resource.

That’s a dream formed by years spent wandering Peru, Italy, Argentina and Wales, where the joy isn’t found in grand buildings and epic wonders as much as it is in building relationships, learning languages and understanding a different way of life.

“Six weeks ago, I met up with the director of Lonely Planet,” Mr Pickford said.

“(He) was speaking at the World Travel Market … speaking about how travellers and tourists now want total immersion, they don’t want to feel like a tourist anymore. We knew that from three years ago when we did our research – they want to hear from locals, they want to hear their story, they want to drop in, they want to talk to them.”

With the business model solidifying in Australia, Mr Pickford is lifting his gaze to an international horizon.

“As we go global then we have to shift our thinking,” he said.

He sees the business as having gone through three distinct phases, starting with the local support and the grant from Gareth Colliton’s ‘Ideas Place’ in Warrnambool – money which went “such a long way” in allowing them to grow.

“… The middle bit, which was building content, building the App, and then the next bit which is how we go global.

“We need investors, we need money, we need half a million dollars to just get us to that next stage.”

While their audience has jumped enormously in the last year and their App service has been vastly improved, Mr Pickford said the last 12 months have been the hardest yet.

“Every business owner knows this, it just doesn’t stop,” he said.

“The complexity of the tech we had to put in (the App) was not easy.”

One new feature now notifies you when you are near a location with a guide, another shows a map of the whole country with audio guides laid out across it.

“And I’ve made some big mistakes this year, it costs money, but it costs your dignity.

“You have to live with that because you’re messing with people’s lives – that’s the down of it.

“You see this product that could be amazing and the App is going to be so much better but it all comes at a price.

“After a few really heavy difficult months I did not think there was going to be light at the end of the tunnel, and then you get these people emailing you and saying we want to work with you, and you talk to Lonely Planet.

“I had totally forgot we were doing something good,” he laughed.

“It’s been so, so difficult that I just forgot we are making this awesome product, and that’s exciting.”