Scenic Rim Eat Local Month

Overview

When it rolls around each year, Eat Local Month serves up a massive incentive to wander through the Scenic Rim, showcasing the absolute best in food and drink — and related experiences — that's available in this patch of southeast Queensland. This event previously ran for a week, but who can fit in everything that's on offer in just seven or so days? No one, hence the move to expand the festival since 2023 to take place across the entirety of June.

In 2024, the fest runs from Saturday, June 1–Sunday, June 30. The event also turns 13. Eat Local Month always involves exploring, eating and drinking — all while celebrating Scenic Rim produce and the people behind it.

This year's bill features 120 event a range of locations, and also in a region that was named one of the best places to visit in the world in 2022 — complete with 40 long lunches, degustations and dinners; 53 opportunities to meet local producers; 37 tours and related experiences; 23 workshops and classes; and over 50 parts of the lineup that are family-friendly. So, expect to be busy.

While the winter harvest festival isn't new, unleashing it in Kalbar and running it over an entire weekend is. It'll close out 2024's Scenic Rim Eat Local Month, complete with a harvest dinner on the Friday night, country music on the Saturday and farmers slinging their wares on the Sunday.

Among the other highlights, Tamborine Mountain's growers get their own market day, a high tea is happening in the fields at Beechmont Estate, and the Fermented Food Festival will return for its second pickle- and sourdough-filled year. Or, you can dine in lavender fields, pick your own produce and edible flowers, blend spirits, make your own liqueurs and cheese, enjoy a game of lawn bowls, take a native foods tasting tour and tuck into a campfire lunch.

At Mount French Lodge, the Long Lunch on the Lawn will pop up. The Roadvale Hotel is putting on a six-course degustation, Tommerup's Dairy Farm is celebrating 150 years in the business and Beaudesert itself is also notching up that anniversary.

And for carrot fiends, because you'll be in a place where 600 million of the orange vegetables are grown each year, the Kalfresh Carrot Day is back — as is carrot ice cream for the month.

Top image: Glenn Hunt.