The Taste Bundaberg Festival celebrates the region’s vibrant food producers and chefs with over 30 events across the Bundaberg food bowl.
This month we share the stories of our Local Taste Ambassadors, and what makes them passionate about growing, producing and cooking in the Bundaberg Region.
Joey from The Garden Mill shares his story
How long have you been cooking in the Bundaberg Region?
Myself and my young family, Kirsty and I came to Bundaberg eight years ago when we first bought the Windmill.
We visited here on holidays when we were living in the UK, and we drove past and we thought the uniqueness of a quirky windmill in a regional town on a beach and thought, wow, that’s pretty amazing.
And then when we decided to come back to Australia, where I lived, I’d never lived in Bundaberg before, but I’ve had family here and saw that the windmill was for sale.
And from us having a hospitality background, a chef background, I always knew that I would do something around food.
There’s lots of reasons why we’ve grown to where we are now.
A little bit was organic. A little bit is about the growth of tourism within our region.
But mostly it’s about the passion of the people that we have working for us.
What do you love about living in the Bundaberg food bowl?
What I love about Bundaberg is the people.
Regional Australians, and particularly our region, there is nothing better than somebody who has the soul and the happiness and the honesty and the humbleness of our Bundaberg people.
What would you like to tell visitors about the region’s vibrant fresh produce?
We have a significant part of Australia’s fruit bowl, particularly Queensland’s fruit bowl.
We hover around 20%, our food bowl serving fruit and veg to Australia.
I’ve seen new farms and big farms to small farms, and mostly it’s all about the quality of our produce, that we use every day in our business, our homes and everything that we do.
How are you involved in Taste Bundaberg Festival this year?
This is probably the fourth or fifth year where I get to do a cooking demonstration on stage at the Farmers Markets, then also presenting some of the local produce in our offerings.
This year we teamed up with Cha Cha Chocolate again, and we’re doing a lovely children’s event.
We’re having a bit of an adult theme one this year where we have Bundaberg Whisky Club working at the Garden Mill, which is our new venue out on Hughes Road.
And we are doing our own One Night in Bargara, which is showcasing, again, local produce, local talent.
It’s important that, part of where we are today is the people who work with us.
It’s an opportunity to do their amazing creative things by staying here in Bundaberg and not moving on.
What’s your favourite thing to cook using local fresh produce?
I think my all time great at the moment is something I used to get from the seafood smokery out in Burnett Heads and that’s smoked mackerel.
It’s one of those things that I can either dress it down and put it in like a simple omelette or make it really fancy and flake it in the lasagne and finish off some truffle oil.
These guys, they catch the fish just off our coast, they bring it in, they smoke it.
They’ve been doing it for years and they’ve been so supportive.
I’m really proud of the produce.
And I’m also proud of our chefs who come up with creative ways to display it and serve it to visitors and our local Bundaberg community.
Read more Local Taste Ambassador stories here, and check out the Taste Bundaberg Festival program.
