Noosa’s local bus service is very good. It not only serves the coastal beaches and holiday hotspots, but extends up into the hinterland villages. So on Sunday morning I caught a bus up to Eumundi, around 12km up in the hills behind Noosa, to attend its Sunday market.
It turns out there are several markets vying for the attention – and pockets – of visitors in this tiny town. The ‘original’ market is located in the town park beneath shady fig trees. Should your chakras need balancing, your aura need alignment, your ears require candling, your palms reading or if the soles of your feet would benefit from a henna tattoo, this is definitely the place to be.
These and a variety of other personal services, many of which I had never considered necessary or even desirable, are to be had, along with all sorts of arts and crafts (think bread boards poker-worked with pithy domestic wisdom, or hand-made birdhouses), along with all manner of fashion statements that I thought had died out with the 1970s (macrame bustier, anyone?).
Across the main road (by 9.30am choked with traffic trying to find somewhere to park) was the Pavilion Market, a second and rather sparsely populated market stretched a short distance up the hill. It consisted mostly of vacant stalls, but this didn’t prevent an enthusiastic aging hippie spruiking its charms out the front of the ‘original’ market, in an effort to draw people over. There was a small number of permanent shops at the top of this area, including an antiquarian map dealer whose stock looked fascinating, although well outside my souvenir price range.
A third market, downhill from the ‘original’, sprouted its form as an incubator of ‘micro-businsses’, and offered yet more questionable fashion, art and craft and organic comestibles. It did appear that at least some of these ‘micro-businesses’ took the form of importing the sort of cheap tat that is available at almost any market in the world.
From what I could see of Eumundi, it looks quite a charming village, with weatherboard Queenslanders in the main street, gradually succumbing to renovation, along with several food outlets and an old pub with a balcony.
