The Wild Harvest Seafood Festival drew big crowds to Mallacoota over the weekend of September 25–27, with around 2000 people attending the main event, the Wild Harvest Market.
Most events were free, but the few that required bookings sold out, including 120 people enjoying a six-course Seafood Feast at the Mallacoota Golf Club.
The market featured stalls selling fresh seafood including local sea urchins and abalone from Mallacoota Abalone Limited, alongside food vans serving up dishes such as seafood paella, abalone tasters, gummy shark and chips, and arancini topped with seafood marinara.
The crowd favourite Big Bears Donuts were also on offer, along with a selection of stalls selling handcrafted treasures from local creatives.
The Mallacoota Foreshore Holiday Park saw bookings up by about 15 per cent on the same weekend last year.
Event highlights included the Follow the Water film – a short film made especially for the festival about the fishing and diving history of Mallacoota, and the Wild Harvest Market, which featured samples of seafood cooked the traditional way by Uncle Noel Butler.
The festival weekend finished with a Pizza Picnic enjoyed by a couple of hundred people at the lookout at the far end of the Foreshore Holiday Park.
