Mansfield Farmers' Market

Most farmers markets get a park or a car park. Mansfield's gets the middle of the main road: the market sets up in the median strip running down High Street, between the post office and the Delatite Hotel, so the stalls sit inside the town rather than beside it. It trades on the second and fourth Saturday of the month from February through December, 8.30am to 1pm.

Twice a month, in the middle of the road

Two dates a month is a deliberately generous cadence for a town of Mansfield's size, and it works because the surrounding country produces enough to fill them. This is High Country grazing and growing land at the foot of the Great Dividing Range, feeding a market whose pitch is straightforward: fresh seasonal produce, straight from the producer. The median-strip setting keeps the market short and linear, which makes it quick to walk and hard to miss anything, and it puts the stalls within a few steps of the cafes and shops on either side of High Street.

The two landmarks the market runs between are worth knowing for their own sake. A short way along the same street, at the corner of High and Highett, stands a marble pillar on a bluestone plinth inside a low iron fence, which is the reason a lot of people who have never bought a vegetable in Mansfield still know the town's name.

Good to know before you go

Check the date first: two Saturdays a month, February to December, with January off entirely. Trading is 8.30am to 1pm and the produce end thins out well before the finish, so early is genuinely better here rather than merely traditional. Because the market occupies the median strip, parking is the ordinary High Street kerbside arrangement and fills quickly on a market morning, which is an argument for arriving at opening rather than mid-morning. Bring bags and a cooler if you are driving back to Melbourne, since a good deal of what is on the tables is meat, dairy and produce that would rather not spend two hours in a warm car.