To Market To Market

Being the beautiful warm Summer's day that today was I went on a scenic adventure down the coast to Torquay. A tourist hot-spot and a surfers heaven. Which coincidentally made it my heaven.

It's been a long long time since I've visited a market and luckily enough, once spotted through the crowds of people, I had come across one. The Cowrie Market, a Torquay specialty on the third Sunday of every month from Sept-April. The market would best be described as a Byron Bay-esque market, one that offers every organic concoction you could ever imagine and more. It has the most picturesque backdrop, looking out across the Pacific Ocean, and with every stall that you pass you get a peak of the world-renowned beach in between. The marketeers are a friendly bunch of people and spend most of their spare-time preparing for this event. Hidden amongst the stalls you will find handcrafted jewellery, home-brewed soaps/candles, recycled clothing, old (but immaculately kept) books and even items crafted from halfway across the world by people with far less intelligence but evidently more talent.

One such example was the hand crafted notebook I bought, being into writing and journalism it immediately caught my eye. And once the stall keeper explained that they were made by a small village in Rajahstan (India), via scraps of leather and recycled paper and that by selling these notebooks his family was trying to help give these villagers an income. So to put it simply, I was sold. I bought one on the spot and I love it. Whether or not I can bring myself to find something worthy to write in it and tarnish those wonderfully recycled pages I will never know.

Being able to find something like this for me at a market was a great experience, and the satisfaction of discovering something, and helping people, is far greater than the feeling and experience of buying something in a shopping centre. So from todays outing it has set me on a market frenzy and there's a couple other I am looking forward too; The Night Jar market, also in Torquay, the Night Market in Geelong and the market which will be held as a part of the St Kilda Festival. If you, like me, haven't been to a market in a while, I suggest you get back out there and discover something.

[ IMAGE OF LIVE ENTERTAINMENT FROM SURFCOAST TIMES WEBSITE}