Turn a pair of old denim jeans into a bucket hat you can wear inside out. With the Wild Woman of Willunga, you cut and sew a reversible hat from preloved fabric, learning the upcycling tricks along the way. One less pair of jeans headed for landfill.

Loneliness turned into a project, then into a plan: a café conversation group and a walking group, started by neighbours who volunteer as 'Sparkies'. Come and hear what hosting one takes, and bring your own idea if you have one. It grew from 40 people's stories about being lonely in the Hills.

James & Oz swap the acoustic set for a full band, loud guitars and a rock 'n' roll light show. Ninety minutes of Are You Gonna Be My Girl, Kryptonite and I Love Rock n Roll, with a pop-up bar to get you warmed up. Their biggest local show yet.

Sit among the candlebark and let a Celtic soprano and her harp fill the valley. Siobhán Owen sings traditional ballads and contemporary Celtic songs, each note drifting up through the trees while you listen from the forest floor.

Peel back layers of dried acrylic and drape them like fabric. With artist Katey Smoker, you will learn to turn paint into thin, tactile sheets that move and hang like cloth. Make at least two: one goes home, the other hangs in the participants' exhibition for six weeks.

Go behind the scenes of the nursery where thousands of plants are raised. Senior curator Matt Coulter shows you how they're propagated, then guides you through growing your own to take home.

Meet the volunteers who coax a native seed all the way to a mature plant, and see the techniques that get it to germinate. Then walk the park and spot the markers on the plants they grew and put in the ground themselves.

Every native plant along the park's trails started as a seed in someone's careful hands. Meet the volunteers who germinate and nurture them, learn the techniques, then look for the markers that tell you which plants they grew.

Turn over a log, feel cool earth under bare feet, watch a spider spin its web. A nature-based occupational therapist guides your family through noticing with all eight senses, on Kaurna Country. Every time a child plays freely outside, a seed of wonder gets planted.

Someone in your town is lonely, and a coffee group or a walk could change that. Come find out what a Spark volunteer does, from hosting a cafe conversation to a walking group. It grew from 40 people who sat down to solve loneliness together.

Cut up magazines to build a face with human eyes and animal features, then piece together a whole figure from unusual photo scraps. Janene brings all the paper and shows you how, and you leave with two collages you made from other people's pictures.

Hear the true story of the 1911 Mona Lisa theft told through a string quartet, in its Australian premiere. Rachel Fenlon sings while playing her own piano and reciting her own poetry. Schubert and Debussy close it, arranged for four strings.

Work from a photo of drifting waterlilies or a wild bird at the water's edge, and build it back up in acrylic on a small canvas with Bethany Neck. You take home your own painting of life among the wetlands.

Press a design of your own into aluminium until it holds the light, guided by Sally Heinrich, who has illustrated fifty-odd books and works in everything from lino-prints to murals. Draw from her pattern books if you need a start, finish three decorations, and take home the know-how to make more.

Wander slowly under the trees with no destination and nowhere to rush to. A guided practitioner leads you through simple prompts to notice, listen and feel, with the theme of seed running through it: slow beginnings, growth, remembering you are part of nature, not separate from it.

Eleven Hills winemakers all pour the same grape on one lawn, so you can taste how each one reads Gamay differently. Start with a mystery pour and a meal, then sit in on the masterclass with the makers and the people who grow it.

Pick up a stick and use it as a paintbrush, a leaf as your canvas, a seed as where the whole thing starts. A nature-based occupational therapist guides you through making art from what you find on the ground, on Kaurna Country, and you leave having felt what time outdoors does for you.

One grape, one night, from old gnarled Barossa vines to producers taking Grenache somewhere new. Taste the full spread, elegant and savoury through to bold and jammy, and ask the winemaker pouring your glass how they got there. Live music and food while you wander.

Gather the fallen leaves and seed pods you pass on a guided walk, then lay them into a mandala with everyone else who walked it. Megan Collins leads the slow part, artist Sonya Mellor the making. A reflection on the small seeds you plant every day, kindness, curiosity, care, and what they grow into.

Lay pressed flowers, feathers and lace on coated paper, then let the spring sun develop them into blue-toned prints, no camera needed. With Ellen Schlobohm you make several photograms, then slow down to stitch simple embroidery into a few of them.

Start with what the science actually says about how nature changes your health, then set your own goals for spending more time in it. End by putting hands in the dirt on a bush care hour with the Friends of the park, caring for the ground right next to where you sat.

Lie back among the trees at sunset and hear the plants themselves make music, their living signals woven into crystal bowls and deep meditative tones. Sacred Resonance turns it into a journey of sound and connection, part of the Nature Festival.

Hear a violin and cello built for Baroque music the way it sounded when it was written, strings and gut and all. Tenor Kyle Stegall and Anthony Hunt lead you from Monteverdi's poetry to Handel's counterpoint, through mythic heroes and the oldest themes of redemption.

A cappella sung close enough to hear between the courses, with breaks to talk and eat before the singers pull it back together. Canapes and a drink on the terrace, then the Festival Statesmen through entree, mains and a cheese and dessert board, finishing on one last harmony.

Paul Lewis has spent years defending Mozart's piano sonatas from being called the poor siblings of the concertos. Hear him make the case, setting the sonatas beside Poulenc, Chopin, Weber and Beethoven so you can trace the threads that run back to Mozart.

There's a tired that rest doesn't touch, the kind that shows up after a breakup, an empty nest, a diagnosis. Kim guides you through meditation, gentle yoga, breathwork and a fire ceremony to put down what you've carried and find your next chapter.

Start with an hour's guided bird walk through the reserve, learning to spot the woodland birds at risk of disappearing from the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges. Then pick up basic bush regeneration skills with Trees for Life, restoring the habitat those threatened species need to recover.

Sit down to a long lunch that travels from the Roman ruins of North Africa to the tribal heartlands of Papua New Guinea. Between courses inspired by those frontiers, Crooked Compass founder Lisa Pagotto tells you about the people and places that sit past the tourist trail.

Cross the low bridges and climb the brick steps David laid by hand, out of shaded woodland into the sunlit clearings that gave the garden its name. Rhododendrons, dogwoods, iris and a rocky waterfall feeding a fern-edged pond, thirty years in the making. Walk it with the two who built it.

Walk 35km, from a hillside garden all the way down to the sea, with checkpoints to keep you going. Every step raises money for research into mitochondrial disease and for the families living with it now.

Spot the fake before it catches you out, playing a scam detective game with your own phone in hand. Digital mentor Abbie Allen shows you how to detect the tricks, where to report them, and which sites give safe advice, so the next dodgy message gets nowhere.

Trade the polka for power chords: this is Oktoberfest with a live rock band and steins in hand. Pull up at the brewery restaurant, order a beer, and let the music run the night.

Learn to use the tools well enough to build a storage rack, then fix it to any wall surface, brick, plaster or timber. With Rose Squire in the shed, you leave knowing how to hang shelves and frames yourself, not just the one you made.

Sit under towering gums while Emma and Dee send fiddles, voice and stomp boxes drifting through the valley. Between songs, Sean tells you why the candlebark forest around you is worth protecting, and how they've done it for 28 years.

Bring your phone and set it up to warn you before the smoke does. A hands-on session with the CFS on the emergency apps that track fires, tell you when to go, and help you plan for the days that matter most in the Hills.

Pick your felt, thread and buttons, then let Janene show you the stitches to turn it into a needle case that's all your own. You'll add beads and bows and come away knowing how to sew, with the first small thing you've made by hand to keep your needles in.

Come as the buds swell and the birds return, and spend a day with James and Sophie moving through spring rituals, yoga and nature. There's space for stillness and celebration, a chance to notice the season turning and what is beginning to emerge in you.

If you've caught yourself thinking "I don't even know who I am anymore," this is 90 minutes of doing the work, not hearing about it. A nervous-system practice and a belief-pattern reset you can use again, in a room of women who get it.

Lie down and let guided breathing do the work your body already knows how to do. Seventy-five minutes of conscious connected breathing to soften held tension and reset your nervous system. No experience needed, just an open mind and the willingness to surrender.

Hand-pick the same botanicals that end up in the skincare, and learn how a German couple grew a Hills farm into a name sold around the world. Walk the biodynamic beds, hear the story of Ulrike and Jürgen Klein, then sit down to herbal tea and German cake.

Choose the words that say who you are, then stitch them letter by letter with artist Makeda Duong. Learn cross-stitch from the start while you plot out your own statement, moto or single word, working through spacing and colour. You leave with the skill to keep stitching your words at home.

Divide and pot up rooted seedlings that will go into the ground next winter, part of reviving 20 acres of creek and bush. Walk the revegetation project, ask what each species is, and end with a glass of the wine made here. The seedlings you pot become next year's planting.

Divide and pot up rooted seedlings that will go into the ground next winter, part of reviving 20 acres of creek and bush. Walk the revegetation project, ask what grows where, and finish with a glass of the wine made here. The plants you pot today carry the project forward.

Sit down together and work out what your household actually does when a fire comes, who leaves, who acts, and when. Learn the local risks and the actions to take before and during a bushfire, then leave with a written plan everyone in the house knows their part in.

Two players, a piano and a violin, close enough to sound like a conversation. The first half stays in a fairytale world: Szymanowski's Greek myths, Prokofiev's second sonata gesturing toward his Cinderella. Then Brahms' third, almost orchestral in scope, that asks everything of them both.

Learner and probationary drivers come with the person who supervises them, so you both hear the same thing about staying safe on the road. A course for the years when the licence is new and the driving still matters most.

Practise your English out loud with a qualified teacher and other people from the area, over four sessions of conversation and activities. Simple tasks between classes help what you learn stick. Free to join.

Move through a gentle yoga session, then sit down with a naturopath and a nutritionist to smell and mix herbs into a tea blend made for you. You take home about fifteen serves and the know-how to keep the ritual going at home long after the last cup.

Stand under a cedar that was already old when the shepherd's cottage went up in the 1860s. Follow the hedges through lawn rooms, past a Japanese fishpond, to a chook house called the Taj McChicken. Sit down to tea, with what you pay going to St Benedict's School.

Sit down with collage, paints and no plan, and make something about what matters to you right now. No standard to meet, no need to explain it. Sometimes it gets clearer when you give yourself space to see it differently.

Kate Miller-Heidke takes the folk songs of her youth and turns them through a darker lens, into gothic folk about the internet age and what it does to us. Hear tracks from her new album, some sung for the first time, with Keir Nuttall on guitar, alongside the songs that made her name.

Sit with a cup of ceremonial cacao and let the wall down, or just be held and heard among women. An hour or so of gentle breath work, yoga, guided meditation and a card pull, with tools to take back into your daily life.

Two piano trios written for lost and lasting friends: Shostakovich's grief for Ivan Sollertinsky in 1944, and Beethoven's affection for the Archduke Rudolf. Violin, cello and piano from three friends who play them, with afternoon tea at the interval.

Start with shaking and Qi Gong to wake the body, then drop into ninety minutes of Yin Yoga held on the Liver and Gallbladder meridians, the Wood element the old Chinese medicine ties to spring. Finish with a sound bath, herbal tea and a circle, timed to the equinox as the season turns.

Wheel-thrown forms fill Gallery 1 at Hahndorf Academy, some challenging and unorthodox, others easy and comfortable, each made in a spirit of calm and contemplation. Meditations explores the maker's inner world at the wheel, hoping to elicit a similar sense of reflection in the viewer.

Bring the women you have leaned on this year and sit down together over a year-end lunch. A chance to slow down, share the table, and mark what you have built with SustainHer.

Sit down with a pile of fabric scraps, lace and thread, and stitch them by hand into a small pot of your own. There are no wrong stitches here. Artist Leanne Gardner shows you how to layer and sew, and you leave with your pot, finished or ready to finish at home.

Meet Hannes on screen the night his daughter moves out and his wife moves on, and he has to work out who he is without the routine that held him together. Before the film, mingle in the foyer over a drink and German food. A new film straight from Germany, with English subtitles, to open German Week.

Hear around fifty guitars play as one, students of every age and ability standing in a single orchestra. Small ensembles take their turn, then guest singers and a band join for orchestrations of songs you already know. The third year the school has pulled this off.

The way you breathe right now was set as far back as the day you were born, and it can be changed. Spend 75 minutes with guided, conscious connected breathing that lets held tension soften and your nervous system reset. A reboot, and a way back to the calm underneath the noise.

Two days with the CFS learning how to defend your home and family when fire comes to the Hills. Skills you keep for the season you hope never arrives.

Grab a Nerf blaster, duck behind cover and pick off the other team before they get you. A few game modes to work through with your teammates, whether it is your first battle or your fiftieth, and a sausage sizzle when the darts run out.

Press a pattern into a sheet of tin with an embossing tool, or the back of a spoon from your own kitchen drawer. With Rebecca Prince you'll design your own texture, work it into aluminium or tin, and colour it in with markers. You leave with an ornament that is yours alone.

Sit down to a bowl of soup when it's cold and something lighter when it's warm, cooked to whatever the season is doing. Share a table with the people who live up your way.

Sit down to soup when it is cold out and lighter plates when it is warm, cooked to whatever the season is doing. It is a shared table with your neighbours, and a reason to come in from the hill and eat together.

Sit down with your neighbours to a bowl of soup when it's cold and something lighter when it's warm, cooked to the season. A monthly meal made for staying and talking.

Make a greeting card that someone can read, then bury in the garden and watch grow into flowers. Press seed paper with real petals and natural textures, write your message by hand, and give a gift that becomes a plant with Arvo Flora.

A single Emily Dickinson song, carried from a Burra studio to the Sydney Opera House, has grown into a whole cycle written for one voice. Hear Sally-Anne Russell sing it complete for the first time, set to Tūwhare, Teasdale and Rossetti for flute, cello and harp, recorded live.

Dye wool with what comes out of your kitchen and garden, set with soy milk, and watch a few batches of yarn turn colour to take home. Then learn the basic needlepoint stitch with Stephanie Doddridge and start a project on canvas, with the skills to finish it at home.

Kneel by the wetlands with your three-year-old and see what wriggles up in the ponding net. You'll wander the grounds together, build with sticks and leaves, make art from what you find, and let a small child follow their own questions outside for a morning.

Sit down at a spinning wheel and turn raw fibre into yarn under the hands of spinners who have done it for years. Have a go yourself. While you're there, see Saltbush Country, where seven Aboriginal artists from across regional South Australia tell stories of culture, community and Country.

Biscuit asks what meaning hides in the simple act of baking for those we love, drawing on the artist's lived experience and family ancestors to find nurturing ways to move forward. This Hahndorf exhibition explores complex clay structures, intricate jewellery, collage, painting and cardboard forms.

Sit in silence for two days and pay attention to the ordinary parts of your life you usually skip past, the mundane and the unacceptable seen fresh. You meditate, journal, then talk it through in small groups and private interviews with the teachers, over vegetarian meals. Beginners welcome.

Build a float, join the bands and choirs in the line, and lead Father Christmas down the hill to the oval. There's a Best Dressed prize for a community group, then the market and fair kick off when he arrives. Register one ticket per group of walkers or riders.

Learn to spot the message that looks like your bank but isn't. This month's session walks you through the scams that land in your inbox and on your phone, and how to tell the real from the fake. Bring your own device, ask any question, and go at your own pace.

Cherry Poppins and Ali Holic are back, this time in their Halloween best, calling comedy bingo between shows. Put on a costume, there are prizes for the best one, and settle in over brisket or a chicken kiev while the numbers and the heckling fly.

Four strings reaching past what four strings usually do: Knox's Satellites opens with textures you won't expect, then Bartók's Fourth turns to Hungarian folk and raw energy. Beethoven's Op.130 closes with the Grosse Fuge, the piece that broke the rules of its own form.

Build a compost ring from a simple wire cage, then work alongside soil biologist Dr Mary Cole to layer, turn and read the heat until it's ready to use. While it brews, learn to make actively aerated compost tea and put the microbes to work in your soil.

Spend a day building the coping skills the last wellbeing survey found local teens are short on. Young people from Hills schools shape the day alongside headspace and Mission Australia, working out what more this community can do.

Put a native seed pod in your child's hands and let them work out how it travels, splits and grows. They'll explore the seeds, pods and flowers of Australian plants and follow one seed's whole journey from the ground up.

Put a native seed pod in small hands and let them work out how it travels, splits open and grows. Kids aged four to eight sort seeds, pods and flowers to follow the journey of one seed from the ground up.

Walk up to the hilltop where South Australia's governors once spent their summers, before fire took the residence. A guided tour tells you what stood here, then light refreshments in The Stables. One of seven days a year the old Vice-Regal grounds open up.

Bright, imaginative artworks by young South Australians line the walls, each one capturing a favourite activity across SA and the NT. Thirty of the favourites are on display at the Mt Barker branch, part of a collection spread across six South Australian locations. Also open Tue 9:30am-5pm.

Walk the orchard with James and Sophie while the cherry trees are in blossom and the vineyard buds are just unfurling, and hear the story from first bud to harvest. Then settle in under the blossoms for shared grazing tables and a tasting of the farm's spring wines.

Hear the school's own drum line, jazz students fresh from Generations in Jazz, and Zac Treloar and the Organ Trio take the stage. Between sets, Year 11 food tech students bring Spanish tapas to your table on shared platters, savoury and sweet.

Meet Granny Flaps, the foul-mouthed geriatric who took Best Comedy at the 2026 Fringe, back for 90 minutes of stand up. She's joined by dreadlocked dad Fabien Clark and MC Jono Makai. One night, and by the reviews your cheeks will hurt from laughing.

Two Adelaide women set love to music: Anna Goldsworthy's poetry on how broken families remake themselves, in a new song cycle with Anne Cawrse. Around it, four hands sharing one piano, a young Ukrainian composer's Last Flight, and Judith Wright asking which version of you is the real one.

Follow the paths down through hellebores and ferns to a teahouse at the bottom of the slope, past forty years of one couple's terraces, roses and rusty tools turned into art. Sit down to tea among Bron's embroideries, all for the Women's and Children's Hospital Foundation.

In 1848 a revolution failed in Germany, and the radicals who plotted it in Berlin pubs sailed here instead. Historian Samuel Doering tells how 160 of them landed in 1849 and reshaped South Australia's science, art and education. Over a beer, fittingly.

Walk into a working protea garden and cut your own stems, proteas, leucadendrons and greens, straight from the bush. Learn how to prune the plants, then build your bouquet the way a florist would, glass vase and wrapping to take it home. Eight spots, morning tea and a walk through the blooms.

Walk a Manchurian pear driveway to a white cottage where the owners grow Sauvignon Blanc and Shiraz on a north slope, then make the wine in the garage. Wander to the duck dam and tea, with a sausage sizzle for the CFS.

Find your class in a photo display going back to 1851, and the classmates who stood beside you in it. Senior students lead the school tours; younger ones made a commemorative quilt of the town's history that gets donated to the museum the same day. Woodfired pizza and Lions BBQ on the oval.

Sit among the candlebark gums with a glass in hand while Courteney Hooper sings jazz standards, her own originals and a few whimsical tales. A jazz performance graduate who writes from surreal dreams and a love of the natural world, playing a forest that is its own nature sanctuary.

Hear Australia's first jazz choir share the stage with the Wardells, a group named for vocalist Anita Wardell. Two ensembles in one afternoon, from standards to newer arrangements, conducted by Lauren Henderson with Ciara Ferguson on piano.

Cut and place your own tiles one weekend, come back the next to grout and finish a 30 by 30 cm piece for the garden. Yvonne Dalton walks you through it from the first cut, using Recreate's reclaimed mosaic pieces if you like. You leave with something made to sit outside.

Sit among the candlebark gums while Glenn Skuthorpe plays you through the forest. He'll air new songs from his coming seventh album alongside old favourites, acoustic, the same voice that's shared a stage with Archie Roach and Buffy Sainte-Marie. The trees are half the point.

Watch pigment bloom and pool across wet paper, then chase those edges into textures you cannot plan. You will try a handful of watercolour techniques with a hot drink and something sweet at hand. No experience needed, just curiosity to see what the water does.

Walk the orchard and oak-lined grounds gathering leaves, blossoms, seed pods and acorns, then take them into the studio and draw them in pen, ink and watercolour. You go home with your own botanical illustration and a potted acorn grown from the estate's old oaks.

That wedge-tailed eagle riding the thermals overhead has a name, and John Gitsham can teach you to read it. Spend an evening learning to tell the kestrel from the kite, and the adaptations that make each one a hunter, so your next bushwalk comes with something to look up for.

If you're a grandparent or kinship carer trying to keep up with gaming and social media, this workshop walks you through the latest digital trends and how to build healthy online habits. There's a second session on helping kids bounce back, and time to sit with other carers who get it.

Nancy Bates learned her craft alongside Archie Roach, who called her one of Australia's finest songwriters. Hear her play through Share Your Love on the lawns, the songs and the stories behind them, grounded in truth-telling and social justice. The album is out on vinyl on the night.

The rosemary, calendula and lavender you walk past in the garden have cared for skin for centuries. With natural perfumer Zhanna Petku, learn to read what your plants hold and craft three or four products to take home.

The rosemary and calendula you walk past every day have cared for skin for centuries. With natural perfumer Zhanna Petku, learn to read the plants you already grow, then make three or four skincare products to take home, plus the basics of hydrolats and infusions to carry on from your own garden.

Plant a seed of intention into a symbolic craft that joins a community Garden Altar, on the other side of a wet winter. Hear a live set from earthspeaks, then dance the theme from seed to full bloom with Carlyn Creatress on the decks. All materials are there for you.

Set up a watch zone on your own phone before fire season decides for you. Bring your device and learn to read the CFS website, use Alert SA to track your area, and report an emergency through Emergency Plus. So you know where to look when the day comes.

Walk a protea garden and cut your own stems, from proteas to leucadendrons. You'll build a bouquet to take home, with a glass vase and wrapping to keep it.

No golf experience necessary, which is the point: a day for St Thomas Dads, past and present, to swing badly, choose the wrong club, and share a beer with someone they'd never otherwise meet. Competitions, a BBQ lunch on course, and the start of a tradition for the community.

Gather your mates in front of the big screen for the biggest game of the year. Siren-to-siren drink specials on Mismatch pints and 78 Distillery G&Ts, so you barely have to leave your seat between goals.

Spend a day on the receiving end for once: a cacao ceremony, journalling, gentle yoga, a guided meditation and sound immersion, then lunch. Wellness With Mel and Amethyst Infusion run it together, for anyone who finds it easier to give than to take.

Sit down at a table piled with native florals, seed pods and leaves, and draw what is in front of you. Pencil the shapes, the veins, the way a pod splits open. Take the drawing home or pin it to the studio wall for the next person to see.

Lie back under the candlebark gums and let birdsong, breeze and the low ring of gongs and singing bowls move over you. No meditation experience needed, just find your place among the trees and let the sound settle you. Here the bush is not the backdrop but part of the instrument.

Lie back under the candlebarks and let the birdsong and breeze mix with the singing bowls and gongs. This is an outdoor soundbath where the trees are part of the instrument, no meditation experience needed. You come as you are and let sound and nature do the rest.

A soprano who has sung Sophie across Europe steps into the Marschallin for the first time, joined by Helen Charlston and Rachel Fenlon in the Rosenkavalier trio arranged for this night by James Ledger. Strauss' Four Last Songs, Berg, Mahler and Korngold close the festival with a Viennese turn.

Pick up a map and carry bag, then follow the Seed Pod trail from the library to the Magic Faraway Tree. Work through the stations in the parklands: puppet play, wooden percussion to bang on, clay seed pods with Tatty K, potions and seed balls. Take home a seedling in a pot you decorated yourself.

The guitarist leading this played Billy Cobham's residency at Ronnie Scott's, alongside Davis bandmates like George Duke and Marcus Miller. On the centenary, Carl Orr and a five-piece move through Davis's work chronologically, then into how the Prince of Darkness shaped the players who followed.

Play a whole day of volleyball in costume, ghouls and goblins diving for the ball, with players who have come from all over Australia. Stay for the raffle and awards dinner, and prizes for the best costume. It runs to celebrate LGBTQIA+ volleyball in South Australia.

Forty short aphorisms from Kafka, set to music by a composer who has just turned 100. Natsuko Yoshimoto takes the violin, the voice shared between two singers. An hour that asks you to lean into dissonance, then dinner and a Q&A to talk it through.

Sit close enough to watch him coax sounds out of one guitar that make you check there isn't a second player. Daniel Champagne brings his live show back to Australia, folk and blues and roots reimagined for a small room where the front row is worth fighting for.

The nutrients your pasture needs may already be in the soil, just locked up where plants can't reach them. Soil educator Joel Williams shows how bacteria, fungi and earthworms release and cycle what's already down there, and what that means for the fertiliser bill you carry back to the farm.

Sit with a cup of ceremonial cacao and let the wall down among women who will hear you or simply hold you. Gentle yoga, guided breath work, meditation and a card pull, with tools to take back into your own days.

Taste chutney made from karkalla, a native food that reminds you every plant carries a story. Learn from Jade Brook, Kaurna and Narungga, how to read Country through its plants, animals and seasons. Take home your own karkalla plant to start a bush food garden.

Rhiz recorded this album in Nashville, then brought it home to a regional pub with a telecaster, a double bass and a pedal steel. Come for the honkytonk and rock'n'roll, dance if you want, and hear 'All Over Again' the night it launches.

Spend a day with the man who has grown dahlias through heatwaves and storms since the late 1980s and now runs the Dahlia Society of Australia. Learn harvesting, disbudding, deadheading and how to keep them flowering, out on the farm where they grow. Come with your questions ready.

Start with a glass of wine in one hand and a paintbrush in the other, with vineyard rows in front of you. You'll be walked step by step through your own painting, no experience needed, with two Spanish tapas starters to keep you going. Something to take home at the end of it.

In ancient Mesopotamia beer was food and money both. Hear how it travelled from there to Egypt to Europe, told by two German scientists who gave up physics and medicine to brew it. Walk the brewery floor, then share a Schlachtplatte around the table with a beer in hand.

The Polish title means 'behind the mountains', the way you'd start a fairytale. Alice, Fred and Misha play songs they gathered on their travels, from Argentina, France, Venezuela, Poland and Sephardic tradition, folk tales that speak to the moon, the rain and the prophecies of birds.

A plainchant of Hildegard opens each half, and from there you travel a thousand years of creation stories in song, by candlelight and music box. Fauré's Eve, a Mozart gem, Sibelius's mermaid in the primordial soup, and Medtner's songs, one human voice threaded through time.

Drawn in the early hours from imagination, myth, fable and folklore, a handful of "creatures of the night" step off the page and come to life in 3D at Hahndorf. Each figure carries its own story and mood, regarding the viewer with curiosity, indifference, hunger or mockery.

Bring the designer piece that never quite suited you, hand it over for tokens, and swap it for something new to you. Women's clothing only, freshly laundered, up to five pieces in and the same number home. Whatever's left goes to the CFS Op Shop.

A Canadian singer-songwriter who has toured Europe with Mark Knopfler brings her voice, guitar and banjo, with violin and double bass alongside. Songs from Wanderer, her chronicle of ten years of love, loss and motherhood, all circling back to a longing for home.

Have a put on the green while the bar's open, then sit down with the people running your local community groups. Hear what they're working on, raise the topics that matter to you, and help plan for the future of the Hills.

Step away from the noise of school life for a bushwalk and a few quiet mindfulness practices with other educators. Reconnect over a platter and a glass of wine as the light drops, hear how the wellbeing work is done here, and see the 2027 Educator Wellbeing Calendar launched.

Take the wheel of a latest-spec supercar and drive it through the Hills, on the roads those cars were made for. A full day of driving that starts from a lodge at the top of the range, with the country of South Australia opening up as you go.

Pull on your boots and line-dance to a live band with a pint in reach. Learn the steps or just watch from the bar, then stay for the beer poured where it was made.

Walk under towering trees with no goal but to notice what pulls your eye, then sit with a journal and a simple prompt to sketch or write it down. Reflect on the seeds you are planting now, small intentions and acts of courage, and close with a seasonal tea ceremony in the open air.

Hear Wolf Blass tell his own story over a glass from his museum selection and German canapés. He speaks about his foundation, the German-Australian ties it builds in SA, and a project he has not shared yet. The close of German Week, in English and German.

Race a tube slide, get lost in a maze, then stay up too late laughing with people you only just met. Two nights in a bunkhouse with the obstacle course, disc golf and Cameron's Climb between meals. It's the weekend away you had as a kid, this time for grown-ups.

Between the lashes and the sudocream, an ARIA-winning soprano found she could still sing while the kettle boiled. Now Sally Cameron brings the songs she has collected touring the world, jazz to folk to theatre, with her husband Sam Leske on guitar beside her.

Spread a picnic rug on the lawn while a nine-piece soul and disco band works through Respect, Lady Marmalade and Stayin' Alive with a full horn section and three lead vocalists. Louis Fuller and DJ Luke Henry fill the afternoon, food and cocktails all day, from the long weekend sun into the evening.

Hand disgorge, dosage and cork your own bottle of sparkling using old-world methods, and carry it home. Sean walks you through it and shows you the critically endangered candle bark forest he and Sue are custodians of on their nature sanctuary.

Hand disgorge, dose and cork your own bottle of sparkling wine the old way, and carry it home with you. First, Sean walks you through the candle bark forest they hold themselves custodians of, one of the most protected patches in the Mt Lofty Ranges, and why it needs looking after.

Emma Horwood sings and plays harp about trees, birds, water and seeds, from medieval tunes through Kate Bush and Nick Drake. She wrote "The Fertile Void" for this, likening frozen seeds waiting out winter to our own hard seasons. Forty seats, close enough to hear the strings breathe.

Sit close enough to hear the strings on a pedal and celtic harp, in a room seating forty. Emma Horwood sings trees, birds, seeds and water, from medieval melodies to Kate Bush and Nick Drake. She wrote "The Fertile Void" for this festival, about seeds waiting out winter, still alive.

Build your own weekend of chamber music from Chamberfest 2026, picking three concerts or more across the festival. A taste of the whole thing without signing up for every note.

Walk into the bushland behind one of the Hills' old estates with a Trees For Life guide who can read every path. Learn how feral olives crowd out native plants, and hear about the restoration bringing this patch back into balance.

Sit under a golden oak with a cup of cacao, then walk into the eucalyptus to see whether you can feel a tree the way Alice does. Alice is a flower farmer who talks to plants, and she will guide you through breath, movement and touch, finishing with Qigong at the grandmother tree.

Walk a candlebark forest with the highest conservation rating in the Mt Lofty Ranges, glass of wine in hand, looking for wildflowers among the trees. Sean will tell you about 28 years of bush care and the endangered species this 20-acre sanctuary was set aside to protect.

Trace a pint back to a 1516 purity law that said beer could be barley, hops and water, nothing else. You taste your way through the styles that rule shaped, and hear how each one came to be.

Spend an hour with a guide learning to pick out the woodland birds recorded here, many at risk of vanishing from the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges. Then get your hands into the bush, learning the regeneration skills that help those species hang on.

Walk off the worn tracks into parts of the bush most people never see, where native seedlings are coming up on their own once the weeds are pulled back. They'll hand you the tools and show you how, first timer or not. Turn around at the end and see the patch you cleared for the natives to take over.

Freshly baked Flammkuchen keep coming to the table until you've had enough. Wash it down with red or white Glühwein, then finish on Spaghetti Eis for dessert.

Bring what is flowering in your garden right now, wattle cut small, camellia leaves, a few succulents, and turn it into an arrangement with people who do this every month. Cutters in hand, oasis on the table, and something to carry home.

Sit with Peramangk and Ngarrindjeri Custodian Courtney Hunter-Hebberman and learn how Cool Burning has shaped this land for 60,000 years. Cooler, more frequent fires that protect wildlife and bring back culturally significant plants.

Take the kids out among the gum trees with a nature journal to fill in as you go. Draw, explore, and follow the activities through the park, then keep the journal for the next adventure. A free morning outdoors, courtesy of the Adelaide Hills Council.

You and your partner, out in the bushland, learning to talk and move and be still together. Guided through playful movement, conscious communication and mindful practices to build trust and intimacy. Bring food to share for dinner, camp the night, and leave steadier in each other.

The 2023-24 reviews found the Little Para and South Para water plans no longer fit the region. Drop in and say what's working, what's under pressure, and what a good water future looks like. No agenda, no decisions, just local voices shaping the policy.

Poulenc wrote it to sit under a stage comedy of errors, and here you hear the music on its own. Piers Lane plays Debussy, then a clarinet and cello piece for the children of war-torn Afghanistan, closing on Ravel's trio from the edge of 1914.

Behind every fire truck there is a crew on the radio running paging, mapping and strike team coordination. Meet them, and the brigades, at an open base with a free sausage sizzle, Smokey the Bear and VR goggles. You do not have to fight fires to be part of the CFS.

Cut, burnish, paint and sew a leather collar to fit your own dog, with jeweller Olivia of Okay Kathigitis guiding each step. You leave with a collar made to your dog's neck, start to finish, no leatherwork needed to begin.

Let your kids build a posy to carry home, then fizz up a potion jar and make flower art from what spring has thrown open. A morning of nature crafts and open-ended play from Little Wild & Green, guided by hands that let children lead.

Sit down with Health Coach Sarah Radford and learn how what you eat shapes your hormones through the menopause transition. You will pick up daily strategies to manage symptoms, plus three recipes to take home and cook for hormone health.

Walk the avenue of mature trees into five acres holding more than a thousand roses, box hedges and a prairie garden still taking shape. Buy plants grown from the beds themselves. It was made in memory of a friend lost to MND.

Sit down with the CFS and actually write the Bushfire Survival Plan you keep meaning to make. They give you the tools to fill it in, so before the next fire season you know what your household will do and when.

The 2023-24 reviews found the Hills water plans no longer fit our changing conditions. Drop in, ask questions and share what you know about the creeks you live beside. No agenda, no decisions, just local voices shaping what happens to our water.

Roll a possum skin ball, flip a wooden cotton reel, play marbles the way the Kokatha mob play them. Drew Kilner, a Kaurna and Ngarrindjeri man, and Matt Sevallos lead the games, with the stories and songs that go with them.

Hold a full stein at arm's length for as long as you can while the oompah band plays. That's Masskrugstemmen, and there's a Brat Toss too. Drink the Helles, Festbier and Hefeweizen brewed just for the day, and prost your way through with your mates.

Bring the worry you carry about the natural world into a circle of people who feel it too. A therapist holds the space for reflection and ritual, so grief that usually goes un-worded can be spoken and shared. You leave held, and a little more connected to the earth and to each other.

Have a look through the shed and take home something handmade, then dig through the second hand tools for the one you have been missing. Tour the workshop, see the projects on the benches, and meet the two community groups behind the Christmas Pageant and the shed.

Hear Sophie Thomson and Hannah Moloney from Gardening Australia talk plants, then wander a hundred stalls of plants and garden decor. Live music while you fill your arms with something to put in the ground.

Fill your basket with fruit and veg straight from the growers who picked it. Wander the stalls and stock up for the week ahead.

Fill your basket with seasonal fruit and veg picked just up the road. You buy straight from the growers who grew it.

Fill your basket with just-picked seasonal produce from the growers themselves. Buy straight from the people who grew and made it.

Buy your veg from the growers who actually pulled it out of the ground. Fill your basket with what's in season, straight from local hands.

Fill your basket with seasonal fruit and veg picked just up the road. You buy straight from the growers who planted and harvested it.

Fill your basket with produce picked by the growers standing in front of you. You buy straight from the people who grew it, in the shade of the trees.

Fill your basket with seasonal produce from the growers themselves. You buy straight from the people who grew and made it.

Buy your veg and eggs straight from the growers who raised them. Fill your bag while the morning's still cool.

Fill your basket with produce sold by the people who grew it. Ask the growers how it was made and what's good this week.

Fill your basket with fruit and veg picked this week by the growers themselves. You buy straight from the people who grew it.

Buy fruit and veg from the growers who raised it. Fill your basket with whatever's in season this week.

Fill your basket with produce picked that week, sold by the growers themselves. Seasonal fruit and veg straight from the people who grew it.

Chat to the makers behind handmade gifts, homewares and craft. It has the easy feel of a village hall gathering.

Browse handmade craft, gifts and homewares from local makers. Chat to the people who made them in a friendly village-hall market.

You only catch this market when the month runs to a fifth weekend. That quirk of the calendar is the whole reason it happens.

Wander stalls of local craft and produce from Hills makers. It fills the community hall once a month.

Browse stalls of local craft, produce and makers under the one hall roof. It's a community market run by locals each month.

Fill a basket with garden veg and home baking still warm from the oven. Have a browse through the handmade crafts while you're at it.

Home baking, garden produce and handmade crafts under one country roof. Wander the stalls and see what the locals have brought in this fortnight.

Fill a bag with fresh garden produce and still-warm home baking. Browse the handmade craft stalls while you're at it.

Fill your basket straight from Hills growers and makers. Fresh produce and local goods, sold by the people who grew them.

Fill your basket with fresh produce straight from Hills growers and makers. It's a proper producers' market, right where it's grown.

Load up on fruit and veg picked by Hills growers themselves. Chat to the people who grew and made what is on the stall.

Fill your basket with fruit and veg straight from Hills growers. You get to chat with the people who actually grew and made it.

Fill your basket from the growers who raised the fruit and veg. Chat with the makers behind everything you take home.

Fill your basket from the growers who raised the produce. Fresh veg and makers' goods, straight from the Hills.

Fill your basket with fruit and veg from the Hills growers who picked it. You'll meet the makers behind every stall.

Fruit and veg from the growers who raised it, picked out on the spot. Local makers bring whatever came up fresh that morning.

Fill your basket with produce straight from the Hills growers who raised it. Local makers set up alongside them in the one spot.

Fill your basket with fruit and veg straight from the Hills growers who raised it. You buy direct from the people who grow and make it.

Buy fruit and veg from the Hills growers who picked it. Wander tables of local makers with their produce and more.

Fill your basket with fruit, veg and eggs from the growers who raised them. Meet the makers behind your breakfast face to face.

Wander the oval past stalls of local produce, plants and handmade goods. It's a relaxed country market with the easy feel of a Hills weekend.

Fill your basket with local produce, plants and handmade bits on the oval. It's an easygoing country market to wander through.

Local makers and growers set up stalls inside the old memorial hall. Come browse what the Hills is making and growing this month.

Local makers and growers set up their stalls inside the old hall. Come see what's fresh and handmade this month.

Local growers and makers set up their stalls inside the old memorial hall. Come find what the Hills are picking and crafting this month.

Wander the pedestrian laneways off the main road when they turn yellow for spring, in a maze of stalls that marks the season in bloom. Artwork for the day comes from local artist Nicole Stewart, on Peramangk and Kaurna Country, run by the village businesses themselves.

Pop-up stalls, food and live entertainment spill through the laneways and side streets. It runs alongside the market, so you can wander both in one afternoon.

Wander the laneways for pop-up stalls, food and live entertainment. It runs alongside the market, so you get both in one afternoon.

Browse around 80 stalls of local makers, bakers and growers under the oaks. Fresh produce and handmade finds to fill your morning.

Wander under the oaks past around 80 stalls of local makers and bakers. You'll find growers with fresh produce alongside handmade goods.

Around 80 stalls of makers, bakers and growers spread out under the oaks. Wander the street for local produce and handmade finds.

Wander stalls of local produce, plants and handmade crafts. Chat with the growers and makers who put it all together.

Browse local produce, plants and handmade crafts under one roof. It carries on while the Institute is being refurbished.

Wander stalls of produce, plants and handmade crafts from local makers. All under one roof while the usual home gets a refurbish.

Browse produce, plants and crafts from local makers all under the one roof. It's a temporary home while the usual hall is being refurbished.

Fresh produce, plants and craft from local makers fill the hall. Wander the stalls while the Institute gets its refurbishment.

Fill your basket with fresh produce and warm home baking. Browse stalls of local makers while you're at it.

Fresh produce, home baking and local makers all under one country hall roof. Wander the stalls and see what the growers and makers have brought in.

Fill your basket with fresh produce and home baking from local growers. Have a browse of what the makers have brought along to sell.