Illawarra Nature Festival 2025

5pm - 10pm 

Encounter The Grassening Living Installation | Sound | Drawing | Workshops in the NASA Gallery - an installation of living grasses and forbs amplified with sound, drawing, and multimedia.

5:30pm - 6:15pm

Wildlife Detectives - Panel Discussion 

How do you find a koala, platypus or a tiny microbat? Dive into the science of investigating the cryptic lives of wildlife in the Illawarra, from environmental DNA sampling to ecoacoustics and drone monitoring. Hear from local experts including Beth Mott from the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water and Trudy Costa from Wollongong City Council.

6:15pm - 6:45pm

Smoking ceremony and invitation to walk through The Grassening installation in the NASA Gallery.  

7:30pm - 9:00pm

Screening of The Message of the Lyrebird film, a multi award-winning Australian documentary about a bird who holds the stories of our landscapes.

9pm - 10pm

Music with Russell W in The Grassening installation in the NASA Gallery.    

1pm - 6pm 

Encounter The Grassening in the NASA Gallery - an installation of living grasses and forbs amplified with sound, wall drawing, and multimedia.  

1:15pm - 5pm

Drop into the rolling 15 minute Nature Talks and hear about everything from native bees nesting underground to threatened fungi, snake vemon and frog fertility. 

1pm - 2:30pm

Nature journals & urban nature treasures with Penny Sadubin.

Drop-in and create a pocket-sized nature journal to take home with artist Penny Sadubin. Pick up a prompt sheet and see what urban nature treasures you can observe around the Servo; plants in cracks, bees on the go, a shady tree, the sound of passing birds…what will you encounter?

3pm - 4:30pm

Drop-in Tentacular Inter-species Story Mapping with Kathryn and Katrin, Understorey. A collaborative zine-making workshop all about human + more-than-human friendship on Dharawal, Illawarra! Drop in and tell a story through drawing, writing or speaking. 

1pm – 2pm 

Hands-on one hour workshop - grow native plants in pots with Narelle Happ, A Garden For Life. 

2.30pm – 3.30pm

Hands-on one hour workshop - build a garden from native plants in pots with Narelle Happ, A Garden For Life. 

1pm – 5pm

Drop-in hands-on poetic activities with Red Room Poetry. Delve into the understory of the poem forest and create a poem inspired by nature.

2pm, 3pm and 4pm

Join Wollongong City Council Natural Areas team for a 15-minute ‘Weed Wacker’ workshop, where you’ll learn to spot key problem weeds in our local area and discover simple, effective ways to control them, making way for our beautiful native species to thrive.

1pm - 5pm 

Stalls and hands-on activities with Illawarra Ecosystems and Threatened Species team, LandCare Illawarra and Green Connect, Wollongong City Council’s Environmental Volunteer Programs and Wollongong Botanic Garden, Shellharbour City Council’s Natural Areas and Environment teams, Australian Native Bee Association and Ecological Interactions Research Team from Western Sydney University, One Million Turtles, WIRES and ORRCA.