End of an era: Gepps Cross Market closes after 36 years

Gepps Cross Market has been held for the last time with thousands turning up to bid it farewell and bag a bargain.

Gepps Cross Market has been held for the last time. Picture: 7NEWS

Adelaide’s “bizarre bazaar” Gepps Cross Market has closed after 36 years of trading.

Famous for being South Australia’s largest outdoor market, it has been an institution at the former Mainline Drive-In site since 1987.

With hundreds of stalls, in its heyday it attracted 4000 shoppers every Sunday.

Thousands of people were there for its final day.

Gepps Cross Market has been held for the last time. Picture: 7NEWS

Mainline Drive-In – which opened in 1955 and was owned by the Wallis family – was Adelaide’s last suburban drive-in before it screened its final film early last year.

The market has shut up shop because the site is being redeveloped.

Gepps Cross Market has closed after 36 years. Picture: 7NEWS

In 2004 Peter Goers dedicated his Sunday Mail column to the market saying it had “real people and real bargains”.

“It’s a bizarre bazaar and our best market,” he wrote, also adding: “It’s a marvellous market – a mixture of fruit and veg (more fruit than a Broadway chorus) and bric-a-brac. It’s multicultural Australia in microcosm: Italians singing at stalls, Muslims and Asians, lots of tracky daks, mullets, flannelette shirts and me.”

Gepps Cross Market has been held for the last time. Picture: 7NEWS

Goers also wrote: “You can buy pretty well anything and nothing is overpriced. I did look for the fabled chop-chop – the illegal tobacco – allegedly sold there, but in vain. You can buy olive trees, flowers, soap, socks, sardines, duck eggs, doggie chews, honey, knitted coathangers, cakes, bottling kits, old toys, lots of old tools (always popular), records, CDs, videos, Italian videos, bolts of material, prayer mats, wrought iron and books … No market I’ve been to in Australia has the spirit, joy and bargains of Gepps Cross.”