Hobart Markets, Two Mornings a Weekend

Hobart makes this easy. Its two best markets run on Saturday and Sunday morning, about a ten minute walk apart, and they do not overlap in what they sell or who runs them. Come for one weekend and you can do both properly.

Then, if you have a car and a few more days, the rest of Tasmania has a farmers market scene that is small in number and unusually high in quality.

Saturday is Salamanca

Salamanca Market runs every Saturday, 8:30am to 3pm, along the sandstone warehouses of Salamanca Place. Three hundred-plus stalls, and it is Tasmania's most visited attraction outright, which is a strange thing for a market to be. The reason it works is a hard rule: everything sold has to be made, grown or crafted by the seller. No importers, no wholesalers, no phone cases.

By mid-morning it is a slow shuffle, so go early if you actually want to buy rather than drift. The woodwork, the Tasmanian produce and the cool-climate flowers are what people carry home.

Sunday is Farm Gate

Farm Gate Market takes Bathurst Street in the city centre on Sunday, 8:30am to 1pm. It started in 2009 with twelve producers in a car park and grew into one of the country's top farmers markets. This is the one for a real food shop: vegetables picked the day before, Tasmanian meat and cheese, and stallholders who will tell you exactly how the season is going.

Two mornings, two markets, one short walk between them. Book the Saturday night and do both.

Around Hobart

Tasmanian Produce Market at Rosny Park runs every Saturday, 9am to 1pm, on the eastern shore, and is the more convenient producer market if you are staying that side of the river. Richmond Village Markets trades every Sunday, 10am to 3pm, in a historic village that is already a day trip for the convict bridge and the gaol.

Further out, Cygnet Market runs first and third Sunday in the Huon Valley, and Bream Creek Farmers Market takes the first Sunday of the month on the Tasman Peninsula road, 9am to 1pm.

The Launceston end

Harvest Market is the reason to plan a Saturday around Launceston. Strict producer rules, Saturday 8:30am to 12:30pm, and it has been named Australia's most outstanding farmers market three times. On the last Sunday of the month, World Street Eats fills a Launceston site with migrant food stalls, 11am to 3pm.

Just south, Evandale Market runs Sunday 8am to 1:30pm in a National Trust-classified village founded in 1811 that also hosts the National Penny Farthing Championships. It is a general market with a strong secondhand and collectables lean.

The north west

The coast between Devonport and Stanley has a quiet run of community markets. Devonport Farmers Market trades second and fourth Saturday, 8:30am to 12:30pm. Penguin Undercover Market runs every Sunday, 9am to 3pm, in the town with the giant penguin. Stanley Harvest Markets takes the second Sunday under the Nut, with a winter break.

Summer evenings

Tasmania's night market season is short. Street Eats @ Franko runs Friday evenings from roughly December to April on the Franklin Square lawns, 4:30pm to 9pm, put on by the Farm Gate team. Hobart Twilight Market runs selected Friday evenings through the warmer months. Both are worth catching, and neither exists in winter.

Working out what is on

Salamanca and the Saturday producer markets are the dependable weekly fixtures. Almost everything else in Tasmania is monthly or seasonal, so check the date first. Markets this weekend and markets on today resolve it, every Tasmanian market sits on the TAS markets hub, and the greater Hobart subset is at the Hobart city hub. If Tasmania is part of a bigger trip, Australian markets worth planning a trip around puts Salamanca in context.