Overview
Maybe you're after an excuse to swap Brisbane for somewhere so scenic that the word is literally part of its name, just for a few hours, and while eating and drinking. Perhaps you're keen to hit up a weekend-long harvest festival, taste your way through a patch of southeast Queensland or getting sipping at mountainside distilleries. Or, you could be eager to spend a day celebrating carrots, including enjoying carrot ice cream. The event that covers all of the above: Scenic Rim Eat Local Month.
For everyone who has ever been to a festival, soaked in everything it has to offer but wished it went for longer, the Scenic Rim's annual celebration of the region's food and drink demonstrated how firmly it understands that feeling back in 2023. Before then, the region hosted Eat Local Week as a massive incentive to wander around the southeast Queensland area. But the jam-packed event was always overflowing with things to fit in, so it made a big move, expanding to become Eat Local Month last year.
There's no going back from that change in 2024, as the just-dropped second-ever month-long program makes clear. When it returns from Saturday, June 1–Sunday, June 30 to a region that was named one of the best places to visit in the world in 2022, Scenic Rim Eat Local Month will feature 120 food and drink events across its 30 days, in what marks the fest's 13th year overall (including its OG week-long format). More than 7500 people are expected to attend.
Big culinary names get behind this treat for your tastebuds and wanderlust alike, with the festival enlisting ambassador chefs. On 2024's list for starters: Alison Alexander, Ash Martin (Eden Health Retreat), Brenda Fawdon (Picnic Real Food Bar), Cameron Matthews (Mapleton Public House), Caroline Jones (Three Girls Skipping), Daniel Groneberg (The Roadvale Hotel) and Glen Barratt (Wild Canary).
They're joined by Javier Codina (Moda Brasa Bar), Josh Lopez (Lopez at Home), Kate Raymont, Richard Ousby (Tama and Ousby Food), Jack Stuart (Blume Restaurant) and Simon Furley (Embers Wood Fire), too. Elliot Platz (Kooroomba Restaurant) and Olivier Boudon (Roastbeef and the Frog) are showing 2024's Scenic Rim Eat Local Month some love as well.
The program itself features 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. The full rundown will also get you hopping from Beaudesert, Kerry and Mount Alford to Beechmont, Kalbar and Tamborine Mountain.
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 that aforementioned carrot ice cream for the month.
Tourism and Events Queensland
Scenic Rim Eat Local Month 2024 runs from Saturday, June 1–Sunday, June 30 at various locations in the Scenic Rim. Head to the festival's website for more information and tickets.