The highly anticipated 2024 Mountain Festival has announced its biggest program yet, showcasing Australia’s environmental luminaries including Alone Australia winner and author Gina Chick, environmentalist Bob Brown and Miles Franklin winner Alexis Wright.
Fuelled by the success of the sell-out 2022 festival, Mountain Festival returns to the forests of Mt Macedon across November 22-24 to celebrate the festival’s theme of Place, Story, Nature.
Other popular guests include author of Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe, Tasmanian writer Robbie Arnott, renowned chef Annie Smithers, garden designer Paul Bangay and Australian rock icon Tim Rogers.
In 2024, Mountain Festival pivots from a writer’s festival to a story festival. The expanded program will be held across multiple local venues and includes Indigenous astronomy, bird walks, botanical art classes, a zero-waste winery lunch and kids’ workshops, among much more.
The revered Ash Wednesday play reading will make a come-back with actors Shane Jacobson and Pia Miranda collaborate with a local cast to tell the story of community resilience in the face of the 1983 bushfires that ravaged the Macedon Ranges.
Founder and festival director, Sonia Orchard, said the sell-out success of the inaugural 2022 festival showed just how much support there was for these kinds of cultural conversations and experiences about place, story and nature.
“The stunning setting of the Macedon Ranges in spring, so close to Melbourne, is the perfect location to host such a weekend, full of inspiring conversations, relaxation in nature, and of course, indulgence in the local produce,” she said.
“Macedon is known for the beauty of its gardens and the excellence of its wine and hospitality.
“This year adding in bird walks and fireside stargazing as well as art workshops, yoga and meditation will make it even more well rounded.
“We hope guests return from their weekend feeling spiritually, intellectually and physically nourished.”
Check out the program and be amazed by special events such as the winery lunch at one of the Macedon Ranges’ most exclusive wineries, while listening to one of the country’s most innovative chefs talking about future foods. Then there are botanical art classes and nature journaling at the historic Duneira estate … and more.
Weekend and day passes are on sale now at mountainfestival.com.au
