New Fringe tour uncovers Perth secrets, scandals and hidden history

The team behind Perth’s unique walking and bus tours are back after a successful 2023 season with their new tour Perth Secrets, Scandals And Hidden History Tour – Starring Famous Sharron! Promising a hilarious, entertaining, and occasionally titillating adventure through Perth and Northbridge’s hidden history, punters will don silent disco headsets and boogie their way through history. Ahead of its debut on Thursday, February 1, and with tickets on sale now, BEC WELDON spoke to Hidden deTours’ Monique Boucher to hear all about the experience!

Welcome back to Fringe World 2024! What exciting historical adventures do you have in store for Perth audiences this year?

This is the fifth performing arts tour I’ve created in collaboration with artists for Fringe World Festival, from history to music to comedy and everything in between. Hidden deTours is the first to combine tourism and performing arts in this unique style since 2014. It has proved to be a winning formula, with numerous sold-out shows and award nominations.

Over the past 11 years, I have uncovered many juicy secrets, scandals, and hidden histories in preparation for this epic comeback collab tour with Famous Sharron. She is a super-star personality who effortlessly brings facts and stories to life with such flair, fabulousness, and fun!

This 100-minute epic walking tour covers 2.7 km and is jam-packed with a hefty dose of hidden history, interesting stories about local characters, and surprising revelations. It is a comedic history tour of Perth and Northbridge using the magic and wonder of silent disco headphones for ages 16 and older.

Local characters come to life, as all participants are given a VIP lanyard with the name of a person, venue, or icon of the past that will be revealed on tour. Famous Sharron has a wonderful knack for encouraging guests to play act scenes from history, which is hilarious to watch and fun for all.

You’ve paired up with beloved Perth-onality Famous Sharron; how did that collaboration come about?

I’ve known Famous Sharron since 2013. At the time, I was working for a performing arts organisation, touring artists around remote and regional WA. My side hustle, Hidden deTours, had just launched its first hidden bar tours and wine tours by bus around Perth.

I had an epiphany one night: what if I merged my two passions—performing arts and tourism—to create a completely new experience that hadn’t been done before? What if the tour guide was a comedian, and how fun and engaging would the stories and facts be through a comedic lens?

I had to find the right comedian, so I put it out to my arts community. One name kept being mentioned over and over—Famous Sharron—with two R’s, as one of them is silent. It wasn’t long before we were bringing this deliciously crazy idea to life.

A Hidden deTour of Perth with Famous Sharron was launched at Fringe World Festival 2014 as a bus tour, followed by a season at Perth Comedy Festival that same year. We had multiple sold-out shows and an award nomination. Famous Sharron also won the Spirit of Fringe award. Due to popular demand, we brought this bus tour back in 2016 to sold-out audiences again. It was very clear: people loved this new tour experience, and Famous Sharron as the hostess with the mostest.

Then Famous Sharron became even more famous, and we couldn’t fit her audiences on the minibus anymore, so that tour wrapped up in 2016.

Tell us about the inspiration for the tour! Was there a particularly shocking secret or scandal that drew you to create this tour?

As a complete nerd for history, I’ve been squirrelling away many hidden secrets, scandals and stories since our first tour in 2014. I’ve been waiting for the right moment and tour concept to unveil them.

In 2023, Famous Sharron was hosting on Channel 7 and doing tourism videos around WA; however, she missed being with live audiences. Last year, she suggested we partner up again for a 10th anniversary comeback tour. I jumped at the chance for her to host a show with the new Hidden deTours silent disco-walking format.

Technology has come a long way since our first tour together. No longer did we have to lug big sound systems around with handheld mics. Silent disco is a game changer for tours, as it allows the tour guide to communicate with a larger number of people than previously in our minibus tours.

A walking tour is also the best way for people to be fully immersed in the heart and soul of the city and to see, smell and hear all the city has to offer firsthand.

It’s taken months of preparation, with multiple trials, edits, hours, and tech runs to get it right. We love how special it feels and what we have created together. We are a great team, and as Famous Sharron often says, she’s the fun, and I’m the facts!

There is a lot of scope for a unique experience like this beyond the Fringe World Festival season, and we can’t wait to watch it all unfold.

Your tours have a reputation for being labours of love, which are very well-researched. What work goes into researching, checking, and devising a tour like this one?

I’m a perfectionist, so nothing is done by halves, as my mum would say. I’m also very passionate about unveiling hidden history and bringing to life stories and characters that may have been overlooked in the past.

Many hours have been spent reading history books, checking online sources, in chat rooms looking for story leads, perusing tourism pamphlets, scanning old newspapers and forums, speaking with historians, and spending endless amazing hours lost in the wonders of Trove!

Discovering golden nuggets of hidden history is like a treasure hunt, where one name can set you on a quest to find more information, resulting in an epic story I couldn’t wait to share. Finding stories that are amusing, insightful and entertaining is very addictive. There is nothing I love more than seeing someone’s face when a new piece of the past has been presented to them or when they are totally engrossed in a story and let their guard down and become fully expressive.

My tours really are labours of love and time, and they are worth every minute the artist and I spend refining them to be the best they can be. Famous Sharron is a true professional, and it’s an honour to be collaborating on this project with her.

Your walking tours combine live historical storytelling with music and sound design in a multi-sensory experience. Can you tell us why you chose that tour format?

Storytelling is the key to making the past come alive. Stories have been passed down from generation to generation and are the easiest way to entertain and remember. A good story can have you engrossed the whole way through, which makes sharing historical moments less banal.

Silent disco takes this tour to a new level. We have curated the playlist for each location and story to heighten emotion, stimulate laughter, or set the scene. Music can trigger memories, transport you back in time, and fully immerse you in an experience.

The ability to set the scene in the actual location where it happened or is happening is pure magic. It is so different from performing in a static space such as a theatre. Moving from one location to another and sharing stories about a place or person is what I love most about being a tour operator.

What led you to create Hidden deTours and start guiding people around Perth and its surrounds?

In my thirties, I spent six years travelling and living overseas, indulging in the amazing hospitality of various countries. I was always seeking out small, unique bars, hidden restaurants, artisan distilleries, craft breweries, boutique wineries, and weird experiences.

My first plan of action when arriving in a new town was always to book a walking tour or a bus tour. My view then and now is that locals have a deeper insight into a place and are more willing to share secrets and hidden stories that guidebooks never mention.

On returning to my beloved hometown of Perth, I was so excited to see the launch of Fringe World Festival, small bars opening in heritage buildings, and small producers beginning to make craft spirits, wine, and beer. Perth had me in the palm of its hand!

I wanted to visit all the small hidden bars in one night, and no tour operator was offering this experience, so I created an itinerary myself and invited friends. It was a blast! My friends encouraged me to offer this bespoke experience to other people, and so Hidden deTours was born.

The business name so perfectly says who we are and what we do. As a seeker of the unusual, ‘Hidden’ focuses on the places, spaces, characters, and stories we shine a light on. And as a child, I was obsessed with the poem The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck, which inspired the ‘deTours’.

With my performing arts background, I was focused on creating tours and experiences with a creative difference. I officially launched Hidden deTours at Fringe World 2014 with a comedic history tour with Famous Sharron, which set the scene for what was to follow.

Do you have any exciting historical tidbits that didn’t make the cut on this tour?

To be honest, we struggled to omit any juicy stories from this tour, as some were so hard to let go of, so we squeezed them in where we could. There is the odd fact or story that might be saved for future use!

There are also stories beyond the boundary of the Perth CBD that would be very exciting to explore and uncover in the outer suburbs.

This isn’t your average history walking tour! What would you say to encourage people who don’t like history or forgot to learn it in school?

This tour is a high-energy, ridiculously fun whirlwind romance with Perth and Northbridge. It’s sordid tales, larger-than-life characters, and hidden heroes come to life with tour guide extraordinaire Famous Sharron. You will laugh, gasp, and shed a tear as we dig up the dirt and sprinkle the fairy dust on this City of Light.

Or come for the laughs and the intrigue as you groove your way around old and new Perth whilst listening to epic tunes that form a wonderful soundscape for our city and the stories revealed along the way.

It is a show and a history tour bundled up into a wonderful package of fun!

You run tours all year around; where can people go to find information about your tours?

Outside of the festival, at Hidden deTours, we run boutique bus tours and walking tours in Perth, Fremantle, and Rockingham all year. We uncover the hidden, the new, and the different by showcasing our vibrant arts, culture, and hospitality scene. We have public tours advertised on certain dates, or we create bespoke itineraries curated for private groups.

Our suite of experiences includes gin walking tours, gin distillery tours, whisky distillery tours, wine tours, brewery tours, hidden bar tours, and history tours. For a more enriching experience, we offer ‘meet the maker’ and ‘behind the scenes’ opportunities with producers that are unique to our tours alone.

I’m also very excited to announce that after our Fringe World season, this silent disco history tour will be available to experience every first Thursday of the month. It will be bookable by the ticket or for private and corporate groups.

Our vision is for the Perth Secrets, Scandals and Hidden History Tour to be the must-do Perth tour for visitors and locals in this great city!

Check out our website, hiddendetours.com.au, or follow us on socials Facebook and Instagram.

What do you hope audience members will take away from your tours this year?

History shares an insight into a place, how it came to be, and why it is like it is from various viewpoints.

I hope this tour challenges people to be curious, question and research. To look up, down and around our beautiful city. To read plaques and listen to stories from all generations. To acknowledge and reflect on our past as we learn and grow together as a community.

History provides a snapshot into where we have come from, who we are now, and what we may be moving towards.