The Hills Band Festival brings 9 great bands with around 200 musicians together in one big afternoon concert.

Community Concert Bands, Brass Bands and School Bands come together to perform jazz, swing, pop, classical and anything in between.

The wide variety of entertainment is sure to suit anyone’s musical tastes.

The festival will be held on Sunday, June 28th from 12:30pm to 5pm at the Lobethal Centennial Hall, Main Street, Lobethal.

It features performances by: Adelaide Hills Concert Band, Cornerstone College, Hahndorf Town Band, Minor Magic (pictured above), Mt Barker District Concert Band, Strathalbyn & District Concert Band, Tea Tree Gully Concert Band, St. Johns Grammar School and Trinity College.

Everyone loves history, whether it be local gossip, an obscure link in a family tree, wartime legends and famous battles, convicts and settlers, architecture or just a good historical novel! Well for all those history buffs, up until Sunday, May 25th, the History Trust of SA is holding its 5th annual SA HISTORY WEEK with a great variety of places to visit, state-wide.

We didn’t manage to get to all of them, but the ones we did see were a real treat. The Marble Hill Ruins, Mount Lofty (pictured right) are still a rather grand structure, even after the Black Sunday bushfires in 1955. It is easy to imagine the grandiosity of the purpose built Governor’s summer residence with the 360 degree view and huge stone walls that still remain. The tour, run by the Friends of Marble Hill, is interesting and thorough and you can even have coffee and cake in the old stable house.

The lights of Lobethal were switched, the cameras rolled and it was all action on Friday, May 2nd, when TV’s Getaway host, Catriona Rowntree, and the crew, visited Heart of the Hills Market for the first in a series of its Market Kitchen Demonstrations.

Guest chef, HQ Cuisine’s, Sean Bradshaw, cooked and presented to the TV crew and gathered crowd, three superb Adelaide Hills produce-based dishes in the newly set-up Heart of the Hills Market demonstration kitchen.

Above Sean’s enthusiastic instructions and the hissing and clatter of pans, the only other sound that could be heard was an approving “mmmm” as the audience tasted the Spring’s Smoked Salmon and B.-d. Farm Paris Creek Quark herb crepes with HQ Dill Mustard Sauce; the grilled figs with Noske’s smoked bacon and Udder Delights Chevre with HQ Onion Jam; and Autumn Moroccan pumpkin salad with seared Woodside Cheese Wrights fetta, HQ Mud Dressing, Moroccan Spice and Poppyseed Aioli.