Gordon Markets

The Gordon Markets have run on the second Sunday of every month for more than twenty-five years, and they are held somewhere very few markets are: the second floor of the Ku-ring-gai Council car park in Wade Lane, between Gordon railway station and the shops on the Pacific Highway. Up to a hundred merchants set up there from 8.30am to 3pm, and the whole thing is under a concrete roof.

What a hundred stalls in a car park actually holds

The mix leans towards the things people go to a monthly market specifically to find rather than the things a supermarket sells. Antiques and collectables, furniture, tools, books, fine stationery and stamps, clothing and bric-a-brac all have a presence, alongside plants, woodwork, jewellery and food. A mobile coffee shop works the floor, and Gordon's own cafes are a short walk down the hill. Two Rotary clubs, Turramurra and Ku-ring-gai, run the market between them, and what the stalls raise goes to charitable causes rather than to a promoter.

Being inside a car park sounds like a compromise and is closer to an advantage. Nothing gets rained off, stallholders with paper goods, textiles and furniture can bring stock they would never risk on open ground, and shoppers get shade in February and shelter in July. The trade-off is that the market has to fit around the car park's day job: every vehicle has to be clear of the level before 8am so the stalls can go in.

Good to know before you go

Second Sunday only, so a first or third Sunday trip to Gordon will find an ordinary car park. The train is the obvious way in, since the station is essentially next door and you avoid competing for the parking that the market has taken over. Arrive early if you are hunting collectables, because dealers buy from each other before the public arrives and the good pieces move first. Bring cash as well as a card: many of the traders here are individual dealers and hobbyists rather than businesses. Give yourself a couple of hours, because a hundred stalls in an enclosed space is more walking than it looks. This is Darug and Guringai country.