If you have ever wondered what this country tastes like, this is the weekend to find out. On Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September the Australian Native Food Festival fills Carriageworks at 245 Wilson Street, Eveleigh, with 31 stallholders, most of them First Nations owned, selling and sampling what grows here: finger limes, lemon myrtle, wattleseed, Kakadu plum, saltbush, native pepper and seaweed from the south coast. Among them are Kakadu Kitchen, whose owner Ben Tyler brings the wet season flavours of the Top End, Native Foodways, and South Coast Seaweed. Entry is free with a registration, and the doors open at nine both days, closing at five on Saturday and four on Sunday. Sharon Winsor, a Weilwan woman and the founder of the native food company Indigiearth, curates the whole thing, and her aim is plain: put the growers and the cooks in the same room as the people who will eat the food, and let the stories do the rest.

Around the stalls runs a full programme. Ticketed cooking demonstrations (59 dollars) bring Kylie Kwong, Adam Liaw, Nat Thaipun, Aunty Beryl Van-Oploo OAM of Yaama Barrgay, Rayleen Brown of Kungkas Can Cook, Mindy Woods and Colin Fassnidge to the stage, and Bruce Pascoe, whose book Dark Emu changed how a generation thinks about Aboriginal farming, joins the conversation. Workshops (55 dollars) include weaving with Ngumpie Weaving, and there are healing sessions with Debbie Watson, a Pitjantjatjara healer. Bring a bag, come hungry, and ask the growers where their plants come from; every answer is a small map of the country you are standing on.

Our short take: the line up was first reported by Maia Hart for Hospitality Magazine (30 July 2026); dates, times and prices are from the Carriageworks event page. Photograph: an Australian finger lime, Citrus australasica, by Amada44, via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0.