December 8th, 2022Cath: Magic roller coaster of emotions

Words: Eve Lamb | Image: James Penlidis

IT’S not your average job description but being Australia’s “leading female magician and mentalist” is a profession Daylesford’s Cath Jamison simply loves.
“When I was a kid, five years old, I got a magic kit and I loved it,” the award- winning entertainer says.
“I was a quirky kid and I’m a quirky person.”
Today, Cath’s mind-blowing and frequently uproarious shows have earned her a reputation as a leader in her field and she’s known as one of Australia’s most unusual women entertainers wielding her trademark sass, style, and mind illusion to captivate audiences.
She’s been described in high profile places as ‘Ellen DeGeneres meets Derren Brown’, and this wickedly hilarious entertainer has won more awards and done more big gigs than you can wave a wand at. Think Melbourne International Comedy
Festival, Adelaide Fringe, Melbourne Fringe, Adelaide FEAST and Midsumma Festival.
Her inexplicable shows have held even seasoned entertainers, like Tim Burton, Dawn French and Melissa Etheridge, spellbound.
Cath and her partner Nicole Peters moved from Mount Martha on the Mornington Peninsula to Daylesford in March last year, as Cath says the town and wider locality ticked all their boxes.
“We’ve always wanted to live and buy in Daylesford. We absolutely love it here,” says Cath who didn’t gain the title of ‘Australia’s leading female magician and mentalist’ overnight.
As a youngster doing magic tricks was “a hobby” and Cath trained and became a professional gardener and horticulturist working at the Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens and Royal Exhibition Building gardens to make a living.
But the love of entertaining, magic and mystery, and of working a crowd was always there.
“I went to magic school in Brunswick Street and I went ‘Oh my God, that’s what I want to do’,” Cath says.
Busking and playing bagpipes in a pipe band, and even dispensing one particularly crowd-enthralling act that involved juggling rubber chickens, all fed into her development as an entertainer. But it was her passion for acute observation of the
human psyche that led to her evolution as a mentalist as well.
Fascinated by the psychology of human behaviour, Cath began to observe the body language and behaviours of those around her and embarked on studies in mentalism and the esoteric fields of telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance, pre-cognition and mind control.
Together with her onstage collaborator, Daylesford’s Aurora Kurth, Cath became part of the immensely popular Sass & Secrets show, a cabaret-style magic and mayhem act that blends comedy, music, mentalism and mirth.
It proved a sellout at Daylesford’s last ChillOut Festival when they performed it at Peppers Mineral Springs where they so impressed that they’re already booked in to bring it back for next year’s ChillOut.
Cath says Sass & Secrets has also just been accepted by Regional Arts Victoria to participate in the state’s Connecting Places program which enables regional venues across Victoria to host shows that might otherwise be out of reach. Maldon’s new
Festival of Dark Ideas 2023 will be just one of their many dates.
But besides Sass & Secrets, Cath is also busy doing her own magician and mentalist gigs and teaching others the craft of magic.
These days she’s able to make a living from her unique talents fulltime as a magician and mentalist for hire for private gigs, from large corporate functions to intimate cocktail party affairs.
“I’m up to Cairns in a couple of weeks to do a big corporate women in business gig,” she says.
“I also have the Australian School of Magic running since 2006,” she says. Through the magic school Cath is able to share her love of magic and teach youngsters, aged from five to teens, some of the tricks of the trade.
“A lot of magicians are getting work now because people are hanging to be connected,” she says.
“There is more to this world than can be explained and when you talk about magic, there’s a collective consciousness and it’s all about everyone connecting and being happy.
“Magic for me is really about entertaining and transporting people back to their childhood, taking them on a roller coaster of emotions.”