The Moorabool Mushroom Festival is back for a third year ready to spread its knowledge spores.
Mycologist, and MYCOmmunity coordinator Ema Corro said the festival has many activities in store for all the guests.
“We have a bunch of speakers, there’ll be scientists and practical workshops like how to grow mushrooms and foraging,” she said.
Ms Corro said anyone from adults to scientists to kids will find something interesting in which to take part and learn at the Mushroom Festival.
“The children, learning how to grow mushrooms workshops would probably be pretty fun,“ Ms Corro said.
“We have a lot of kids who are just really interested in funghi, and interested in science.“
An important part of the event is teaching people how to forage safely.
“The most important thing is to never consume anything that you’re not 100 per cent sure what it is,” Ms Corro advised.
“It’s a harm minimisation thing. If you teach people what to avoid, and how to do things properly, hopefully they’ll be safe.
“An important thing to look at when foraging is not just what the edible species are, but also the potential poisonous lookalike.”
To assist beginner foragers, MYCOmmunity is working with other mycology groups around Victoria to put together a guide on mushrooms.
“It’s been a couple of years since we’ve started developing this, so we were actually hoping to launch it at the last festival,” Ms Corro said.
“I’m hoping that we get it out by the festival (2025) so we can officially launch it, but we’re pretty much all volunteer run, so it’s a bit of a struggle to get something like that done.
“It’s getting there though.”
The Moorabool Mushroom Festival is on from Saturday, April 12 to Sunday April 13 at the Bacchus Marsh Public Hall.
Details: https://myco.tidyhq.com/public/schedule/events/68998-moorabool-mushroom-festival-2025Faith Macale
