Port prepares to flex its mussels

IT WILL be mussels galore tomorrow (Saturday, January 14) when the Portarlington Mussel Festival make its return to W.G. Little Reserve for the first time in three years.

Seafood mania will again take overr the Bellarine, with more than 200 stallholders and thousands of visitors set to eat, dance and celebrate the delicacy during its peak season.

Event organiser Richard Underwood said that the festival team were eagerly looking forward to welcoming people back for the 15th installment of the event.

“The most exciting thing about it all is its back on,” Underwood said.

“Obviously post-COVID, things have changed with the availability of infrastructure and difficulty to source items, but we’ve got there.

“On top of the fantastic mussels, there will be five different entertainment areas and the highlight of that will be Bjorn Again, the cover band.

“The layout is similar to other years, and we’ve added some extra tweaks to make the venue more user-friendly.

“There will be a large array of food stalls, and we are thrilled to have the support of close to 20 community groups.”

Mr Underwood said the event will move around ten tonnes of mussels in 2023, similar to that of previous years.

“It’s all sourced local, a very large percentage of mussels that you’d find around Australia are from Portarlington,” he said.

“The mussels are at their best in January and we want to help promote that.

“We have a very generous supporter in Mr Mussel who have donated us plenty of mussels over the last several years.”

He said events of this nature did not happen without hundreds of volunteers who gave their time to help get the festival up and going.

“We are all volunteers, we don’t take anything out of the festival other than pride.

“We hope that it’s as successful as past years.”

The community are encouraged to head down to Little Reserve in the centre of Portarlington to experience the festivities for themselves.