Meeniyan Square

Meeniyan Square is the outdoor precinct on Whitelaw Street that hosts most of the town's markets, built around what locals still call the Art Gallery corner redevelopment. Rather than sitting empty between market dates, the square carries three permanent tenants, so it functions as a small dining and drinking precinct on ordinary days and scales up into a market on the days it isn't.

One square, three different markets

The square's calendar runs wider than a single weekly or monthly slot. The Meeniyan Farmers Market takes the second Sunday of every month, 9am to 2pm, and is the produce-focused session: meat, fish, fruit and vegetables from South Gippsland growers. Separately, the square runs Friday evening twilight markets with street food, local wine and beer and live music, plus a monthly makers and car boot sale on its own date. Long-weekend barbecues and other one-off expos and events fill in around those three.

The "Art Gallery corner" name the redevelopment still carries comes from the Meeniyan Art Gallery, a volunteer-run, not-for-profit space also on Whitelaw Street that shows changing exhibitions of Gippsland artists alongside a gallery shop of locally made art, gifts and homewares. Meeniyan itself is a small town, with a population of 771 recorded at the 2016 census, which makes a precinct carrying a winery, a pizzeria, a café and a rotating market calendar a disproportionately large amount of infrastructure for a town its size.

Good to know before you go

Because the square hosts several different events, the day you visit changes what you'll find: turn up on the wrong Sunday and there may be no market running at all, just the three permanent tenants open as usual. Check which event is on before making the trip, particularly if a specific market (produce versus makers and vintage) is the reason for the visit. Whitelaw Street is the main street through town, so parking is on the street and surrounding blocks, the same as for the farmers market itself.