Fresh, market flowers
The Bendigo's Market is held every Sunday at the
Prince of Wales Showgrounds
from 8:30am until 3:00pm. It stretches over five pavilions, making it one of the largest markets in Central Victoria and with around two hundred stalls, there's sure to be something there to take your fancy.
There was plenty to entertain me when I visited early one weekend; buckets full of fresh flowers at the gate, a tarot-card tent made from purple velvet decorated with dancing gypsies, and an amusing children's cap I found with a solar panel on top and hole in the visor to allow room for a small, plastic, solar powered fan.
Warm, woolly, knits at the Bendigo Market
Some of the stalls were quite well known to me, one of them having been at the Bendigo Markets for at least the last twenty years. It was a stall that specialises in antique collectables with old stamps, bottles, wartime paraphernalia, souvenir spoons, Australiana tins and even the
Daisy Lane and
Strawberry Shortcake swap cards that some of us girls remember playing with.
Folksy buttons and soy melts
At the market, I purchased some folk-style wooden buttons. I had to wait for the lady to serve me though, because she was charmingly busy, sharing free knitting patterns with some of her other customers. She painstakingly wrote down for them on which row they should 'knit' and which row they should 'purl'. 'Scarves for the homeless' she explained.
I also bought a couple of exquisite
WickedSoy melts that now have my lounge room smelling divine as they release their aromatic oils.
There was plenty of food at the market as well. It ranged from home-style cakes and biscuits to a sausage sizzle. There were fresh, free-range eggs, homemade chocolate truffles,and of course, a cupcakes stall with vanilla bean, red velvet, devils food, rocky road, and cranberry choc-chip flavours to try.
A lot of people had just ducked into the markets to visit the bakery stall and were leaving with fresh-baked Turkish bread or an apricot and date loaf for breakfast.
The Bendigo Market is busy in the early morning and gets even more so throughout the day. Some of us still miss the market in its old Epsom Showground configuration, but this version is still okay.
At $5.00, these frames are great value
