October 24th, 2025Kyle’s Rant

I have read a lot recently in The Local about Daylesford’s Rex and the Phoenix@The Rex community theatre within it.

For those of us who have been around a long time, history in the news game has repeated itself. I remember dragging a few cinema seats out onto Vincent Street in Daylesford to take a photo for The Ballarat Courier, winding open the aperture in the dark cinema doing a few more photos for The Advocate and once again for The Local, with former president Gina Lyons, pictured.
And it seems like here we go again. Don’t get me wrong, I want the thing to work, especially with all the work the volunteers have put it into, along with the dollars and work from The Block.
But what has happened to all the stuff, investment and fundraising from the last venture after a mammoth effort from around 2009 until the eventual opening in 2013 by the last committee, in terms of fundraising and volunteering.
New seats were bought as well and the latest (at the time) of cinematic technology. I even remember plaques on seats being available for purchase then.
In 2017 the cinema was closed for what was only meant to be a year or so while the Hepburn Shire Council built the new hub.
Sadly, they eventually bungled the project, running into the streets with their hands in the air screaming “the sky has fallen in” and again the cinema’s future was unknown. So what happened to all the equipment and why isn’t it still around today to make the re-opening a little easier for the committee?
Well, here is the answer. After a quick phone call to The Local journalist and all-round ripper bloke and cinema volunteer Kevin Childs, I found out the following about The Rex cinema 1.0, 2013-2017.
In summary, $150,000 was spent on building and outfitting the cinema, and the expenditure did not relate day-to-day operations. The equipment purchased was re-usable and was therefore sold. The projection equipment had major issues as it was unused for some time, and the cinema group were advised that it would be best to sell it.
The cinema group still owns some sound equipment which is being reused by Radius Gallery for community screenings. The chairs were sold, as storage would have been too costly (wouldn’t the council have had some spare space somwhere?) and the donor tags will be displayed in the new cinema.
But here we are gazing into 2026 with no sign of the Phoenix pulling its body from the funeral pyre. I believe most of the renovations have been done but even that being the case, the entry to The Rex is still a worksite. And you can’t have theatre patrons traipsing through a construction site to get to the movies. Hard hats anyone?
On to worldly events – I nearly threw up when I heard the Israeli hostage families swooning over Trump, the great saviour.
I am all for peace but even a blind man can see that the horse trading was done months, if not years ago, and Gaza probably will never truly be home to the Palestinians again.
Not unless it is in the service of the world’s wealthy, jetting to what will be one of the best tourist hangouts in the world. Which is going to be built after the rubble is cleared by none other than Trump himself and his treacherous tribe. And it’s just another Trump real estate deal.
And now I read that the billionaire buffoon has just gotten into the banking game according to the Financial Post’s headline “US approves new bank backed by billionaires with ties to Trump”.
How much do you need mate rant over…