Adelaide, do you remember the East End Market?
BY 9am, the streets of East Tce and Grenfell St were covered in cabbage leaves. Blocked-off side streets created traffic trouble. The East End Market was chaotic, noisy, and memorable. Here’s a look back.
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I ALWAYS loved the comings and goings and the pure energy that was the East End Market on East Tce.
Three days a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the streets immediately around the markets were closed off just after midnight and trucks laden with produce, freshly picked and packed from the market gardens of Adelaide, would arrive to jostle and push for parks and begin the task of unloading their harvest.
Hand trucks and forklifts would pick up boxes, pallets or wooden containers of fruit or vegetables, stall owners and workers would rush between street and stall, buyers would barter and buy the goods they required, it was a real hive of bustling activity.
By 9am, East Tce and Rundle St would be covered in cabbage leaves and other leftover rubbish and litter, then the council streetsweepers would come in and clear away the debris.
Bill Chartres, who spent his entire life working in the East End Market, firstly for his father and later for himself, has now established a website dedicated to the memories of those years.
“I first went to the market with my father when I was about six, that would have been in the mid-1940s,” Bill recalls. “But I didn’t start really working there until I was in my early teens.
“It was a rather strange place, it seemed like everything was always happening at once, but because it was so small you got the ‘feel’ of the whole thing that was going on around you, everybody was connected.
“It wasn’t unusual to start work at around midnight or 1 o’clock in the morning. If we had a truckload of apples for example, before the days of the forklift, that would take up to one and a half hours to unload.”
The buyers would then come in at about 3.30am or 4am and once the siren sounded they would rush between trucks and stalls to hand-select their boxes of produce, loading them on to their wooden hand trucks.
Sally Carpenter Nanotti has fond memories of her childhood years spent at the East End Market.
Posting recently on the Adelaide Remember When blog, she recalls “getting up in the early hours and heading in there in Dad’s (Robert Nanotti) truck with my sister. Dad would do his buying, give us a push around on a flat-top trolley.
“Then, once he was done, we’d all get a toasted ham and cheese sandwich and a hot chocolate and eat it in the truck, watching the hustle and bustle of the market. Then we would be off to our fruit and veg shop, owned by my Dad and Grandpa (Arthur Nanotti), which was on Magill Rd to help set things up. Great memories”.
Jane Ray wrote: “My uncle Fred had a fruit and veg shop in the Barossa and as a wonderful treat I went to the market with him a few times.
“What an adventure; spending the night at his home, up and off to the market in the dark, all the smells, noise and excitement, then back home as the sun was rising. Life was much
simpler then!”
Kathi Cannizzaro also remembered: “I used to go into the market with my Dad Pat Martin who had a fruit cart in the Rundle Mall in the ’70s and early 1980s. The cart was stored at the market, where we stocked it with gleaming polished fruit every day.
“My brothers and I would help build the shows of fruit and it was a great life for us kids. I also remember Dad taking us to Ruby’s for a milkshake”.
Ruby’s Cafe in Rundle St was the place to go for breakfast and a real favourite with all the market workers. It had been that way since 1942, when Ruby Jones took over the cafe and fed the early-morning crew who lined up every day for her sandwiches, tea, coffee and milkshakes.
By the mid-1960s, it became apparent that there was a need to relocate the East End Market, which was opened in 1867. The streets surrounding the area were regularly overcrowded and the disruption to traffic in the city caused by the usual street closures was becoming a source of real concern.
It was not until 1985, however, that the State Government made available a parcel of land north of the city at Pooraka to establish a new produce market.
Bill Chartres says: “It was something that had to happen. I think everybody knew it was the right thing to do. In East Tce, it had become very crowded, whereas the new location was wide open with plenty of space and lots of room to move.”
Construction of the new facility at Pooraka started in late 1987 and was completed in September 1988.
And so the old East End Market closed its doors for the final time and ceased operations on Friday September 30, 1988. On the following Monday, October 3, the Adelaide Produce Market started trading for the first time at Pooraka.
Bob Byrne is the author of Adelaide Remember When, and posts memories of Adelaide everyday on his Adelaide Remember When Facebook page.
You can visit Bill Chartres’ East End Market website here
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