Palmyra Western Farmers Market

Palmyra Primary School opened on 30 June 1913 as the first state school in the suburb, having started life in the Mechanics Institute hall on the corner of Tamar and Carrington Streets. It is heritage-listed now, and every Sunday its grounds fill with the Palmyra Western Farmers Market, a weekly market whose takings feed straight back into the school's kitchen garden program.

A market that pays for a school garden

The produce end is where the market earns its name. Farm-fresh, organic and spray-free fruit and vegetables, seafood, eggs, honey, pickles and preserves, organic bread and pastries, cold-pressed juice, organic olive oil and cut flowers. The eating end covers breakfast burgers, crepes, gozleme, curry and fair-trade coffee, with live music running through the morning and native seedlings for anyone leaving with plans for the garden.

Running weekly rather than monthly changes what the market is for. Stallholders build a regular customer base instead of chasing a once-a-month crowd, and shoppers can treat it as the week's fruit and vegetable run rather than a novelty outing, which is reflected in how many people arrive with trolleys and their own bags.

The market sells on the principle that the person behind the stall grew, bred, caught, pickled, smoked or baked what is in front of them, and it is listed by the Western Australian Farmers' Markets Association. It sits in the City of Melville, a short run from Fremantle, and functions as much as a Sunday meeting place for Palmyra as a shop.

Good to know before you go

Trading is 8am to 12pm and the fresh produce moves fastest in the first hour, so early is better if vegetables are the mission. Parking is street-only on McKimmie, Tamar, Aurelian and Zenobia, and those streets fill up, so walking or riding in is often quicker than circling. Bring your own bags. Being a weekly market rather than a monthly one, it is an easy habit rather than a date to diarise.