Halloween in Australia lives or dies on the back of the communities and families who decide, year after year, to throw open their doors and make a night of it. In 2025, we were lucky enough to be a part of two of the very best.
This year, the costume was a full Charlie and the Chocolate Factory affair. I took on the role of an Oompa Loompa, green wig and all, while the rest of the family rounded out the cast. We had Gill as Violet Beauregarde in full blueberry form, and Mirin in a perfectly turned-out Veruca Salt complete with her Golden Ticket and lollipop. Once you commit to the bit, you commit hard.
Friday Night: Mt Kembla on the Rise
First up was Friday the 31st at Mt Kembla, tucked under the escarpment just outside Wollongong. We've been doing Mt Kembla for a few years now, and in 2025 it felt like a tipping point. At several points during the evening, cars couldn't physically pass through the village, that's how many trick-or-treaters, parents, costumed adults and curious onlookers were out and about. Streets that used to have a handful of decorated houses now have whole strips lit up, fog machines going, and front yards transformed into mini haunted attractions.
Mt Kembla itself is a quirky, heritage-rich pocket of the Illawarra, a former coal and kerosene mining village with the Mount Kembla Village Hotel sitting right at the heart of it as the oldest weatherboard hotel in the region. That pub has become the unofficial command centre on Halloween night, the staging point for groups of "kids" (read: adults in costumes arguably more invested than their children) to regroup, refuel and head back out into the streets. Massive thanks to the team at the Mount Kembla Village Hotel for being such a brilliant base station yet again.
If you live in the Illawarra and you haven't done Mt Kembla on Halloween night yet, put it in the diary for next year. Get there before sundown, grab a feed at the pub, and let the kids loose with a bucket.
Saturday Night: Bonnet Bay, Our Little Tradition
The very next night, Saturday the 1st of November, we made our way to Bonnet Bay for what has quietly become, in our own little corner of Sydney, the most legendary Halloween party going around. It's a private party between friend groups who all intersect in some way, originally through school or work, and it started back in Hammondville somewhere around 15 to 20 years ago. From those early Hammondville nights, the tradition migrated south to Bonnet Bay, where it has continued to grow each year.
What I love about it is that the bones of it haven't changed. The same crew of incredible friends still leans in just as hard, still goes to the same trouble, still serves up the same belly laughs. Walking in as an Oompa Loompa with Violet and Veruca in tow, we were immediately surrounded by some of the most committed costumes you'll ever see at a backyard party, from tattooed cartoon villains in gold chains to a Lego-headed mystery guest (Lego Lass from Lord of the Rings) who deserves their own blog post. The kids tore around in the dark, the adults caught up over drinks, and the costumes only got better the longer the night went on. As always, it was a spectacularly ghoulish and grandiose affair.
What both Mt Kembla and Bonnet Bay proved this year is that Halloween in Australia is no longer a niche, slightly-awkward American import. It's becoming our own thing, shaped by community hosts who've been at it for years, by pubs willing to be the staging post, and by families who keep raising the bar. The Oompa Loompa wig has been carefully packed away, and we'll be back at both next October with something new and exciting.
