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The White Hat Guide to Queen Victoria Market, Melbourne

The Queen Victoria Market is aptly named because she is the queen not just of Melbourne markets but of Australian markets.

If you only have time to visit one place in Melbourne, then it should be the Vic Market. But try to visit while all the produce stalls are operating (Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings) because they make up the real heart of the market.

At the Vic Market you will immediately see a representative cross-section of Melbourne's population - its ethnic mix, dress styles, language and most of all their attitude to life. Faced with such animated and good-natured variety, it is hard to maintain for long that there is only one 'right' way to do things; that there is only one self-evident religion; that enmities from old countries should be continued in the new; that being called 'love' or 'darl' is sexually oppressive; that the working week that just passed is really that important.

Cooking Class & Queen Victoria Market - A Foodie's Paradise Gourmet Food Tour

The Vic Market brings city people in touch with earthy realities. It is very clear that meat comes from dead animals; that vegetables are grown in dirt; that sweat and energy is part of commerce; and that Collingwood will win the Grand Final this year.

It is truly the melting pot of Melbourne - Toorak matrons, tattooed labourers, politically correct families from the leafy suburbs, people from all walks of life.

Listen to the spruiking. Much of the language comes direct from the 1930s. Or maybe earlier, when the Sentimental Bloke of C. J. Dennis' poems went down to the rabbit stall at the Vic Market to meet his mate Ginger Mick ("e 'umps the bunnies when he toils does Mick").

Buy yourself sausage in a roll from the Bratwurst Shop and sit outside and watch Melbourne pass by. Particularly the children who believe that this is what life is like - only to be surprised when they move away from Melbourne.

Garryowen tells us:

"The first men hanged in the colony were the two Van Diemonian black murderers, on the 20th January, and the next batch three white bushrangers, 28th June of that year. The condemned burial-ground was close by the north-eastern corner of the public cemetery, outside the fence. Herein were deposited the remains of the blackfellows, and nothing further was heard of them for more than five months, when they were joined by the white fellows, and shortly after, on certain nights of the week the most unearthly doings were indulged in by the ghosts of the five defunct individuals, who had the outside graveyard to themselves, but who, so soon as the night was well in, jumped out of their graves and plunged into vagaries of a most astounding character, a species of pedestrianism which might be termed a combination of corroboree and hornpipe.

The blackfellows in opossum rugs, and the whites in shrouds, romped about in wild confusion, kicking and sparring at each other, prancing along by the northern boundary, westward to where the Melbourne pound was situated, and back to the starting point .... Persons engaged here at unseasonable hours declared that they witnessed such exhibitions."

Where is the Queen Victoria Market?

Click on the Queen Victoria Market link to the right of the map. Use the controls to zoom in or out on the map or change to satellite view.

The White Hat Quiz

• Several people who have worked at the Victoria Market have gone on to create an impact on the world stage. Name one.
• Where in the market can you see fossils that are millions of years old?

Our rating of Queen Victoria Market

Our rating: Five Hats

Please note that the above are the official trading hours. At many markets, a number of stalls close early, so you need to be there well before official closing time.

Please note that the above are the official trading hours. At many markets, a number of stalls close early, so you need to be there well before official closing time.

 

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