'It's like the Olympics is coming to town': Chiltern embraces off-grid event

After six years at Eldorado, Chiltern Racecourse will play host to the 2024 Off-Grid Living Festival on April 6 and 7.

This year's edition will feature an electrification area dedicated to the latest innovations in electric vehicles and devices.

In a major coup, Tesla will have vehicles displayed at the event and offer test drives.

Electrification co-ordinator Russell Klose said it would be the biggest display of electric vehicles he's seen at a festival with 17 exhibitors in that section of the event.

"It creates a stir knowing Tesla are coming and they will have cars here for test drives, which is just amazing," he said.

"Tesla don't typically do things like this, but they're coming to the Chiltern off-grid festival.

"We've also got Hyundai and MG, so it's a really good spread.

"We're having Polaris here with their side-by-sides (off-road utility vehicles) and there will also be drones for agriculture.

"I'll be here with Kilowatt Cars selling my secondhand ones and there's another group called EV Automotive and they're selling a passenger transit van and a trayback ute.

"We've got a pretty broad spread for our first real effort. After this, I reckon it'll create quite a bit of interest."

Mr Klose attended the Off-Grid Living Festival for the first time in 2023 and was blown away by the turnout.

"I thought it was going to be nice to see floppy hats and tie-dyed T-shirts again, I haven't seen them for a while, but I got there and it was amazing," he said.

"There was just under 10,000 people through the gates, we sold three cars on the weekend.

"It was just a broad spread that I had not seen before. It was stunning."

Festival director Kate Nottingham said outside the electrification section, the festival would also offer a range of talks, workshops and demonstrations that encouraged the crowd to interact.

"We don't want it to just be a walk around, we want people to get hands-on and learn skills and chat with people," she said.

"Originally we started with one talks tent and now we have seven, with more than 150 talks over the weekend and 100 different hands-on workshops.

"A lot of the stuff people will find here is pretty unique. It's stuff you maybe can't even find in stores, and you certainly can't find it all in one place.

"We're set to be the biggest sustainability event in Australia. It's really mainstream and our audience has changed completely.

"The first festival it was a lot of alternative living people and now it's all walks of life coming along. Some will come for the technology and the talks and others will come for a bit of fun and connecting with community."

Ms Nottingham said the Chiltern community had really embraced the festival in the lead-up.

"They're excited. It's like the Olympics is coming to town," she said.

"All the pubs are putting on live music, cocktail nights, and they're putting a sustainable twist on everything they do.

"The tourism group is running a free shuttle bus all weekend going around town, including in the evening so people can come from the camp here to the pub and home without using cars.

"Having the train station in Chiltern is great because people can come from Melbourne and I think that'll reduce the cars a far bit.

"Having easy access off the highway was another benefit here. It was a bit tricky to get into Eldorado, people would be banking up for a couple of kilometres."

In addition to educational and technological offerings, the festival will feature live music performances, artisan markets and food vendors.

Event co-ordinator Arabella Watson started as a volunteer at the first Off-Grid Living Festival in 2018 and is now responsible for the entertainment.

"In the past three years I've been the person organising the music stages. We've got a lot of great music here, so there's a fun element as well," she said.

"We're going to do a recycled fashion parade and encourage people to think about upcycling their clothes and recycling and mending, instead of just going out and buying new stuff all the time."

For more information or to purchase tickets, visit offgridevent.com.au.