Why I love Adelaide: Jarrod Walsh

If you've attended any events at Adelaide Oval, it's probably Jarrod Walsh that you've heard behind the microphone. Jarrod is a music, sport, pop culture and gaming enthusiast who was previously heard on Adelaide radio stations Nova 919 and FiveAA. He loves Adelaide and especially loves entertaining the people of Adelaide. See Jarrod's favourite places and things to do in the city and North Adelaide as he relives some of his best memories. You will hear Jarrod at the WellFest Adelaide events Wellness Squared and Hounds on Hutt in October.

I moved to South Australia as a 15-year-old in 1999 and have been here ever since. At the moment as a father of two young girls, I’m always looking around Adelaide for good things to do as a family. I’m spending most of my weekends at live sport because that’s where I work most of the time. I’m always where things are on, so it makes me very excited that there is always something happening in Adelaide.

I used to come into the CBD because I was working in the CBD from Monday to Friday but now that I’m not specifically working in there, I come out of pleasure which is a really good experience. There’s lots of good cafes in town. The good thing is lots of young South Australians are getting opportunities to open up businesses and things like that. On Pirie Street for example, there’s lots of nice cafes but also a really good mix of established businesses. I live in Port Adelaide, so I will normally jump on the train, park at the Entertainment Centre, hop on the tram and I am in the city conveniently and just a walk around Adelaide especially on a sunny day is just beautiful especially the Park Lands are beautiful to walk around. 

Adelaide United winning the Grand Final at Adelaide Oval in 2015/16 because I was lucky enough to be on the microphone then. But over the past, I’ve been to some really good music festivals when we had a lot of them in the city like Future Music Festival around the same time as the Fringe in the Park Lands. The Festivals seem to be a real good destination where people would come and congregate.

As a family it would probably be the Adelaide Zoo, it’s easy to get to. I also like bringing my family to Adelaide Oval when there’s events on there, I’m pretty fortunate that at times I can take my family onto the actual grounds, so for my daughters to one day realise how lucky they were to do that is really nice. It’s also great walking through Rundle Mall at Christmas time, it feels Christmas-y and it’s a really good vibe.

I’ve had some really good memories at Adelaide Oval and my best one there was the very first home game for Port Adelaide at the newly redeveloped Oval. It was a Showdown back in 2014 and the buzz of the crowd was electric. It was a really warm day, Port Adelaide won and it was one of the more memorable experiences at that Oval, I will always remember it.

I go to Penny University just off Rundle Street near Ebenezer Place and it’s beautiful. Foti takes care of all the coffee and works there with his brother who is the chef so it’s all family recipes. It was only a couple of years ago that it was voted the best coffee in Adelaide and when I was working at the radio station a couple of years ago, Dua Lipa came in and wanted to go for a coffee (not with me obviously haha) but I sent her down there with her crew and they had a coffee there.

There’s a couple of different places, I mix it up between Sosta or Gauchos because I love chimichurri sauce and I love beautiful Argentinian food. However, George’s On Waymouth is a favourite of mine and its been an establishment in the city for longer than I can remember. The great thing about going there is that you get not just an amazing dining experience, but George the owner who the place is obviously named after, he has such a taste for Greek wine, so if you’re someone who loves a nice glass of wine, to go there and experience it is amazing. If you’re not into fine dining, just up the road there is a place called Chicken and Pig and also a new place which is really funky called Extra Chicken Salt. It’s awesome, they’ve made chicken and chips really fancy but it’s a really nice place to go out, especially after you’ve been to Adelaide Oval.

When I’m in town with my mates, especially when the weather is starting to heat up a little bit, going to the rooftop at The Gallery is always quite nice, that would be one of the first spots we would go to. Some of the local pubs are really nice, they’ve been done up as well. It depends on the occasion, if I wanted to go for a nice glass of wine, I really like going to the East End down around Ebenezer Place, there are some beautiful places down there.

It's a hidden gem but getting better – because of the Pirate Life influence on the state, the District at Skycity is a really cool venue for music and entertainment. And as things slowly start to get back to normal, this is going to be a destination for people to go to. And having a brewery in the casino as well is pretty awesome.

The convenience and I also love that people sometimes turn their nose away from Adelaide, it keeps them out of our city because they don’t realise what they’re missing out on. I think that sometimes we take for granted how lucky we are to have everything at our disposal – a really good public transport system and we have a beautiful mix of entrepreneurs especially in the city, there is the opportunity for young South Australians to start visualising their dreams and getting the opportunities to create and make them a reality.

Definitely Port Adelaide, I am a Port Adelaide boy at heart, I’ve lived in the area ever since I’ve been in South Australia and its made up of an incredible bunch of people on and off the field and they’ve made my family like a part of theirs too.

The thing that I love is the fact that I see myself as exactly the same as them, the only difference is that I have the microphone – I’m ultimately just a fan with a microphone. Everything that I do on the microphone, I understand the audience that I’m speaking to. To be able to relate to them and all my objective is, is to put a smile on their face, no matter the result of the sporting match or the way the event goes, if they walk away having a good time, that’s all that matters.

I can't wait. Especially in the environment we’ve had for almost two years around the world, to put a really strong focus on people’s wellness, mental wellbeing, physical health and reaching out to everybody in South Australia especially in the CBD is a really important thing. Particularly for men who don’t talk about their wellness enough, they like to think they’re okay because it’s a bit of a bravado and macho thing, for us to actually start having a platform and feeling courageous to stand up and go ‘it’s time we took care of our wellness a little bit better’, I think something like this isn’t just good for the city, it is important for the city.