Deniliquin Lions Community Market

Waring Gardens is the best thing Deniliquin could have given its market. The park sits in the middle of town, the Moreton Bay figs are old enough to throw serious shade, and the lawns run down to a lagoon. On the fourth Saturday of the month the Lions Club fill it with stalls and cook breakfast while they are at it.

Seedlings to sculptures, and everything between

The range is wider than the size of the town suggests. Seedlings and potted plants, fresh fruit and vegetables, local produce, clothing, craft, and at the other end of the scale, sculpture. It is the sort of mix that happens when a market is the only one in the district that month and every maker within an hour's drive turns up for it.

The barbecue is cooked on site rather than trucked in, and there is a coffee van, which between them turn a shopping trip into breakfast on the grass. Given the setting, most people do exactly that.

Good to know before you go

Bring cash and bags, and come hungry rather than fed. Four and a half hours is long for a country market, so there is no need to rush, though the plant stalls thin out first. Parking is street parking and there is plenty of it. Deniliquin is a natural stop between Melbourne and the Riverina, and a fourth Saturday is the morning worth planning the drive around. The shade in Waring Gardens also makes this one of the more bearable summer markets in a part of the state that gets genuinely hot.