The Fresh Market Warrnambool

The Fresh Market Warrnambool trades on ground that used to be a swamp. Lake Pertobe was low, boggy land separated from Lady Bay by a thin sandbar until the city set about reclaiming it, an idea that was circulating among Warrnambool's leaders by the early 1960s and became real work through the 1970s. The market now sets up on the result: a landscaped reserve of water, lawn and playground sitting between the town centre and the beach.

Producers first, then everything else

The market is built around the south-west's growers rather than around a general stall list, which is why the phrase the organisers keep using is producers, creators and designers. That means the vegetable grower and the cheesemaker are the anchor, with makers and designers filling in around them, and coffee, music and workshops layered on top. It is a Sunday-morning market in the older sense: people come to buy the week's produce and then stay because there is nowhere better to be.

January is treated differently. Rather than dropping to two dates in the busiest month on the Great Ocean Road, the organisers run a Summer Markets series across most Sundays in January, so a visitor in town for a week has a reasonable chance of catching one without planning around the calendar.

Good to know before you go

Trading runs 8am to 1pm and the produce stalls thin out well before the end, so come early if you are shopping rather than browsing. Parking is along Pertobe Road and in the reserve's car parks, and it fills on a fine summer Sunday. The site is open and coastal, which is lovely in February and genuinely cold in July, so dress for wind off Lady Bay rather than for the forecast temperature. Bring your own bags and a card as well as cash, since stallholder payment setups vary. If you are making a day of it, the playground, the lake circuit walk and the beach are all within a few minutes on foot, and the town centre is a ten-minute walk north. This is Gunditjmara country.