Advertisement
Published: March 15th 2007
Avondale Market
Welcome to Avondale MarketFirst stop Avondale, West Auckland. I take the train from Britomart and pay a guard who doubles as a ticket collector like a conductor on a London bus .He carries a black leather satchel holding pages of tickets, tears one off for me, punches a hole with a little metal punch and continues on. I’m not sure if I’ve entered a raffle. The man across the aisle from me has fallen asleep and I can’t help wondering where he is heading for but in less than fifteen minutes I arrive at Avondale station. In case it’s a winner I leave my ticket on the seat and step down from the train. The place looks deserted and not a soul gets out with me.
Avondale could well accommodate the most idiosyncratic concentration of people in the country and probably derived its name from the area in County Wicklow, Ireland, where early pioneer John Bollard (1839-1915) came from. The district was first settled in 1843, while the central township, originally called the Whau village, began in the early 1860s when the settlers first built a church, followed by a store and a hotel.
The Avondale Spider came here in the 1920s,
Avondale Market
People from around the world. probably in imported timber from Australia, and has stayed ever since, rarely known outside the Greater Avondale area. The Avondale Spider was the star in the Spielberg classic movie Arachnophobia. The spider is not poisonous, is nocturnal and feeds on insects including flies. But I’m not here to catch spiders or flies, I’m here for the Avondale Market.
Leaving the station I turn left by the wood yard and follow a stream of people heading down towards the race track where the market is held. This popular Sunday market reflects and caters for the wide diversity of immigrant culture in the city and should not be overlooked.
This is not your average craft market, rather a real market in the sense that it is the community that shops here, the tourists seldom hear about it or go. Asian people selling cheap imported wares made in China. Music pounding out a pacific beat. Fresh coffee and hot pork buns. Tools and light machinery. Electrical goods and furniture. Buskers. Clothing, shoes, boot sales and personal stalls where people sell their books, plants and other unwanted collectables. Central to all this and surrounded by stalls of exotic fruits and an incredible variety of
Avondale Market
Gossip from around the world Asian vegetables is a huge fish shop supplying anything from shark to live cat-fish. From a stand alongside I stop and buy a coffee, drinking it whilst watching three small girls about seven or eight perform Maori songs and dances as their father plays guitar. A crowd gathers and I slip away in search of something to eat. It is late morning and now the place is heaving. The queues for food put me off and I settle for a fresh pineapple trimmed and sliced.
I’m looking after a friends flat for a couple of days and need to stock up on some supplies. His place is back up the hill towards the station so I don’t want to overload myself. I choose an interesting selection of veg, grab a bottle of fresh orange juice guaranteed not to be a concentrate and push my way back through the crowd.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.06s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 5; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0355s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
