Walk the Land, Follow the Water at Wild Harvest 2026

There are plenty of ways to experience Mallacoota during the Wild Harvest Seafood Festival.

You can taste the wild harvest at the market. You can get out on the water, meet the people who make their living from the sea, listen to live music, explore the coastline or settle in for a long lunch with friends.

But this year, we’re inviting you to experience Mallacoota in two particularly special ways: by seeing the waterways and the people of Mallacoota on the big screen and by walking the land with Noel Butler.

These are two festival experiences that go to the heart of what Wild Harvest is all about—not simply seafood, but the deep connections between people, place, culture and the natural world.

Follow the water onto the big screen

On Saturday morning, Wild Harvest heads indoors for a very different kind of journey.

At the Mudbrick Pavilion, White Rock will be screened alongside the debut of Follow the Water, a short film made especially for this year’s Wild Harvest Seafood Festival.

White Rock takes us beneath the surface to explore one of the Great Southern Reef’s less visible environmental challenges: the spread of urchin barrens and the impact they have on kelp forests. It brings together science and seafood and asks us to think differently about the relationship between what we harvest and the health of the marine ecosystems that produce it. 

Then comes Follow the Water. Made especially for Wild Harvest, the film meanders through Mallacoota’s waterways and into the lives of fishers, divers, families and people who have travelled from around the world only to put down roots here. It is, in many ways, a portrait of the place behind the festival. A place where wilderness and community sit side by side. Where the sea is not simply something to look at, but something people work on, live beside, learn from and care deeply about.

And there’s a delicious connection between the films and the festival itself: the screening will be accompanied by Blue Kelp tastings, bringing the story back from the screen and onto the plate.

Saturday 26 September | 11am–12.30pm

Mudbrick Pavilion, Mallacoota

Free

Walk the land with Noel Butler

On Sunday morning, join Noel Butler, Budawang Elder from the Yuin Nation, for the newly released Bush Foods Walk.

This is much more than a stroll through the bush. Noel is a qualified teacher, educator, mentor, horticulturist, chef and historian, and together with his wife Trish has spent more than 35 years teaching and sharing knowledge with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities. On this gentle walk around Mallacoota, Noel will introduce participants to the land from a First Nations perspective, sharing knowledge of plants used for food, medicine and survival, and exploring the relationship between First Nations people and Country. 

It’s a chance to slow down and look more closely at a landscape that many of us might otherwise simply walk through.

For Wild Harvest, that connection feels particularly important.

The festival has always celebrated what comes from the sea—abalone, oysters, mussels, sea urchin and other local seafood—but the idea of wild harvest extends far beyond the waterline. It encompasses the knowledge of Country, the plants and landscapes that sustain people, and the generations of knowledge that teach us how to understand and care for the places we call home.

Noel’s walk brings that broader story into the festival.

Sunday 27 September | 10am–11.30am

Meeting point: Mallacoota Lions Park

Tickets: $30

Places are limited, so booking ahead is recommended. Book now!

A festival about more than seafood

Since Wild Harvest began, the festival has been about showcasing the remarkable seafood of Mallacoota and the surrounding coast. But it has always been bigger than what is on the plate.

It is about the people who harvest from the sea.

It is about the communities built around fishing and diving.

It is about the waterways, bush, beaches and reefs that make this place so extraordinary.

And it is about the stories and knowledge that help us understand why this landscape matters.

That’s why these two experiences belong at the heart of the 2026 festival.

Come for the seafood. Stay for the stories. Walk the land. Follow the water.

The Wild Harvest Seafood Festival runs 25–27 September 2026, with three days of local seafood, wild places, music, markets, outdoor adventures, cultural experiences and plenty of reasons to make a weekend of Mallacoota.

Start planning your festival weekend and explore the full program at www.wildharvestseafoodfestival.com