Tonight, our Biggest-Show-On-South-Australian-Earth kicks off with the start of Adelaide Fringe.

It’s the magical time when the circus truly comes to town as we’re inundated with singers, comedians, acrobats, jugglers, magicians and any number of creative performers that often leave me wondering: one, how in the hell do they do that?; two, what sort of brilliant, bohemian life do they lead away from the stage as they travel from gig to gig?; and three, how does one know that they’ll actually be any good at juggling balls and painted car tyres with their feet whilst lying on their back and wearing black suspenders?

Thousands will flock to the city’s East End to explore, be titillated and provoked into wonder, shock and laughter. And here, perhaps, lies a bit of a problem.

How often have you asked a friend if they are going to see something at the Fringe and the default clarification is: “Oh you mean The Garden?”

The venue they refer to of course is The Garden of Unearthly Delights which across an incredible 21 years has become a hub and meeting place for artists, tourists and audience members, with food, bars, pop-up tents, rides and a variety of venues all found beneath incredible gum trees.

It’s a garden built to make Costa Georgiadis green with envy.

In fact, a mate from Sydney is making the trip this year after hearing me bang on incessantly about our Mad March (and Fab Feb). In his words, he was coming to Adelaide to “finally see some Fringe shows in The Garden”.

“But what about the other venues,” I texted back, at which point the three flashing dots went on for about five minutes before his reply came through: “What do you mean?”

What followed was a rather comical three-star conversation as I tried to explain that the Fringe isn’t just the Garden of Unearthly Delights and there are so many other venues and acts he really should be checking out.

Sure, he could try walking across the road to Gluttony which also hosts a similar type of experience and some world-class acts, but what about the “little” people?

“What do you mean?”, he again fired back and so I gave up and in a very un-2023 move, I actually picked up the phone to talk to him as I pulled up all of the options.

Venues include a yurt behind the Migration Museum, the National Aboriginal Institute in Tandanya and our city’s official centre – Victoria Square – will host something new and cool this year called The Pyramid.

You could try either the Holden Street or Nexus theatres, get to the Goodwood studios, wander through the University of Adelaide or find the meeting hall behind the Town Hall.

Some awesome comedians play at the Rhino Room and Howling Owl or walk west until you get to Light on Light Square.

By this time, I could actually hear the tapping on his keyboard interrupted by perfunctory uh-huhs as he had clearly switched off and returned to the work I’d disrupted.

And that was before I had even got on to the suburbs and regions.

It often surprises people to know that around 300,000 tickets are sold to shows in the suburbs and further afield which means that about 35 per cent of the $21 million box office takings are from outside the CBD.

In fact, when noodling around the Fringe website I found a pretty nifty feature that lists shows by council areas (find the ‘Fringe Across the State’ dropdown) which will open up the 130 events that are showing outside our metro area.

Yes, bigger can at times be better, but purists would argue that when we concentrate only on the bigger venues and the acts that book them, we’re ignoring why the Fringe was originally started – as an outlying alternative to the Adelaide Festival of Arts to profile more independent and local artists.

It seems that, perhaps, the Fringe has got too big for its name.

No longer is it really the “Adelaide” Fringe, as it extends geographically so much further than the city. Maybe it’s time for the Fringe to have its own Fringe.

So why not this year create your own story of discovering the next big thing in the backblocks of Bowden, talk about the African Acrobatics you saw in Tea Tree Gully or even head to Whyalla to work out why Mark Ryan is ‘Not Here to F*** Spiders’?

And whilst you’re travelling you can workshop your answer to that other question I always ask myself at Fringe time: what will I actually say to my child when they tell me they want to run away and join this circus?

Ali Clarke presents the breakfast show on Mix 102.3. She is a regular columnist for InDaily.