Apple Tree Creek Sportsgrounds Markets
A second-Saturday sportsground market on the Bruce Highway, in a sugar town that spent its first eighty years under a different name.
About this market
The Apple Tree Creek Sportsgrounds Markets run on the second Saturday of the month, 7am to 12pm, on open ground beside the Bruce Highway six kilometres west of Childers. Being on the highway rather than tucked into a town centre gives this market something most country markets do not have: passing traffic between Bundaberg and the south, and a site people can actually pull into.
A country market on the highway
A 7am start and a midday finish is the standard shape for a Queensland country market and for good reason, since the ground is open and the middle of the day is not the place to be standing in it. The sportsground itself has been a community site for well over a century, part of the recreational reserve that once held a band rotunda for a district of up to fifty farming families. That history is the backdrop to the market: this is a locality of a few hundred people that supports a monthly market largely because it sits on the road between two larger centres.
Market at a glance
The Isis district around it is sugar country, cleared from scrub in the 1870s and shaped by the mills that followed, and the market sits in the middle of farmland that has been worked continuously since.
This place spent most of its history under a different name. The locality was called Bodalla until 1962, a name the Dundaburra people of the Northern Kabi group used for the Gregory River Plum, a fruit that looked to the first Europeans like an apple. The Dundaburra name for the area itself was Buth'arth, meaning scrub. The fertile Isis scrub was first cleared for farming in the 1870s, three sugar mills followed at Knockroe, Childers and Isis Central, the school opened in 1887 and the railway from Childers to Cordalba in 1896.
Before you make the trip
Second Saturday, 7am to 12pm. Bring cash and bags, since a country market this size will not have card facilities everywhere. The sportsground is signposted off the Bruce Highway and parking is on the grounds. Shade is limited on open ground, so a hat is worth having by mid-morning even in winter. Childers is six kilometres east and worth the extra few minutes for its heritage main street, which makes the two an easy pairing on a Saturday morning. This is Kabi Kabi country.
Frequently Asked Questions
- When are the Apple Tree Creek markets on?
- The second Saturday of the month, from 7am to 12pm, at the Apple Tree Creek Sportsground on the Bruce Highway.
- Where exactly is it?
- About six kilometres west of Childers and roughly 50 kilometres south west of Bundaberg, right on the Bruce Highway, which makes it one of the easier country markets to find.
- Is there parking?
- Yes. The sportsground has open ground for parking and sits directly off the highway, so the market is a simple stop rather than a detour.