Markets in Queensland

Queensland is the one state where Sunday clearly beats Saturday. Most markets here trade on a Sunday morning, and they start early, before the heat, which is a straightforward consequence of running outdoor markets in a subtropical climate for most of the year.

Eumundi is the best-known example, a Sunshine Coast hinterland market that takes over the town twice a week. Brisbane pulls in a different direction: Eat Street Northshore is an evening container-yard food market rather than a produce market, while West End and Mount Gravatt cover the morning slot. Further north, Rusty's in Cairns opens at five in the morning on trading days and works as a genuine tropical produce market rather than a tourist stop.

Coverage stretches a long way up the coast. Yeppoon, Mareeba and Port Douglas all run markets that are the main weekend event in town, and several trade on a monthly or fortnightly cycle rather than every week.

Scale is the other thing that sets Queensland apart. Eumundi has run since 1979 on a strict locally-made-only rule and now pulls around 1.2 million visitors a year into a hinterland town of a few thousand people. Rusty's in Cairns started with a single farmer and six stalls in 1975 and has grown into 180-plus stalls of tropical fruit most of the country has never tried. Brisbane's Mount Gravatt Sunday Markets has traded since 1969, making it the city's longest-running Sunday fixture, and Caboolture Country Markets has run as a pre-dawn Sunday institution since 1979, now the largest market in South East Queensland, complete with its own live poultry nursery.

The Gold Coast adds a beachfront layer the rest of the state does not really have. Surfers Paradise Beachfront Markets has run three nights a week since 1995 with the ocean as a backdrop, and Carrara Markets spreads across ten acres with mini golf, pony rides and a reptile stall, a claim to being the country's biggest permanent market. Brisbane's farmers market scene, meanwhile, traces back to one person: Jan Powers, a Cordon Bleu-trained cook whose original market is still run by her daughter and granddaughters three generations on.