By Parker McKenzie
The Kalorama Chestnut Festival is returning in 2022 bigger than ever, with Mt Dandenong Primary School joining Mt Dandenong Kindergarten in hosting the event.
The 100 per cent volunteer-run festival will see a diverse range of stalls showcasing locally made handcrafts and produce, roasted chestnuts, food stalls and more on Sunday 1 May at Kalorama Memorial Reserve.
The event started with parents selling chestnuts out of brown paper bags to raise funds for the kindergarten and has now become a loved family outing for locals and tourists alike.
Kalorama Chestnut Festival committee member Mariana Job said the festival has been running for over 30 years as a fundraiser for the kindergarten, and it is significant this year because it was damaged in the storms in 2021.
“You can still drive past it and it’s surrounded by fencing, they are working out of a temporary space in Olinda Primary School,” she said.
“We really need to rebuild and repair, so much was damaged.”
Ms Job said there would be plenty of entertainment and activities to do at this year’s event.
“This year, we’ve also locked in a chainsaw artist,” she said.
“This chainsaw artist is going to work with one of the trees on-site that fell last year — a chestnut tree — and is going to make sculptures, which will be auctioned off at the festival at the end of the day.”
This year, the festival will have two new chestnut roasters thanks to local businesses and a storm recovery grant from Emerald Rotary, with the roasters being built locally.
Ms Job said the support of local businesses and the community, in conjunction with the partnership with Mt Dandenong Primary School, will make the 2022 Festival the biggest one yet.
“Their support has actually been overwhelming, everyone that we’ve reached out to has offered what we’ve asked and more to be honest,” she said.
“We’ve never had so many sponsors, which is really nice after what happened last year. It just feels like a really strong community, we’re a lot closer than we were before the storms.”
Kalorama was one of the areas worst affected by the June 2021 storm weather event and both Mt Dandenong Kindergarten and Mt Dandenong Primary School had their buildings damaged, with some repairs still ongoing.
