by Pat Hawkins, Newspaper Article
Red Hill’s market celebrates its 10th birthday next Saturday, October 5. From 8 a.m., cars are expected to be bumper-to-bumper on the roads leading to Red Hill Showgrounds as people try to get there before the best things have been sold. The market stays open until about midday. The market attracts thousands of people not just from the Peninsula, but from the city as well.
And it’s the theme of the market – unchanged in 10 years – that attracts them. To have a stall there, you must “make it, bake it, grow it or breed it” yourself.
ABOVE: Judy Hines spins wool for Red Hill’s 10th anniversary market.
Cathy Morrison, one of the founders, recalls that in 1975 she and her husband, Graeme, a part-time teacher, their friends Carole and Kevin Stapleton, Beth and Barry Wilson and Alan and Elaine Watt, began the market as a natural development of their way of life in the district. All the women were then in their early 30s and had young children. Virtually the same original families still form the market committee.
When we first started it, we were baking our own bread, growing our own plants and beginning to weave, spin and make pots, Cathy recalled. “The market just grew out of this kind of barter system where we could all exchange these things.”
The famous guidelines of the Red Hill Market evolved: Only locals may have a stall. Holders can only sell produce if they “make it, bake it, grow it or breed it.”
“It seemed to have an instant appeal to the public and it just took off,” said Cathy. “Now, of course, it’s almost an institution on the peninsula.”
There were 28 stall holders at the first market. Each paid $1 a morning, and the committee paid $25 to the Flinders shire for hire of the grounds. They paid for all other expenses such as telephone calls, publicity and stamps from their own pockets.
“It was a very casual way of doing it,” Said Cathy. “We really didn’t work out how much it was costing us for about three years. By then the market had become so popular we realised we were the only ones involved in it who were not making any money!”
Ten years later, the number of stall-holders has grown to more than 200, each paying $13 a morning. The committee now pay $6,000 to the shire’s showground committee for the season of nine Saturday mornings.
LEFT: Bernie Shallekoff, the mustard man, prepares his tasty condiments for sale at the market.
You want it? The market is sure to have it – pots, plates and plants, lampshades, leather belts and lavender bags; fresh herbs, honey and dried flowers; cushions, clothes, or a firetongs of hospinnied called matilda or a goat named Archibald.
Pictures PHILIP ROWLEY