Sydney’s early markets were far from super

MAJOR supermarkets are ending the era of the plastic bag, which means either a return to the past in the form of reusable bags and baskets or a leap into the online future

Looking south along York Street showing the Old Markets on the left, Central Police Court and the right, and Sydney Town Hall in 1875. Picture: State Library of NSW

SINGLE-USE plastic bags will be a thing of the past at Woolworths check-outs from today, and at Coles from July 1. This means that millions of Australians will need to change their shopping habits — again. It will see a return to the old days when people used paper bags, boxes or reusable bags and baskets for their shopping. It might also motivate more shoppers to use home delivery services, only visiting a store for small orders or when something is urgent.

Sydneysiders are well versed in adjusting our shopping habits — going all the way back to colonial times.

The city got its first store, of sorts, when the government Commissariat, run by Andrew Miller, opened for business in 1788. Because Sydney was initially run as a penal colony, the store was set up to issue rations to soldiers and convicts. Officers and convicts who given land grants were encouraged to grow their own produce to help make the colony self-sustaining. But the first years were a struggle as the first settlers, used to more fertile soils and wetter weather in Europe, tried to grow things in this foreign land. Those who were successful could contribute to the Commissariat in exchange for promissory notes for payment in money. These notes became an unofficial form of currency.

Circular Quay, southern end, looking west to Rocks and Observatory. The Commissariat store is the dark building on the far right behind the ship in 1870. Picture: Courtesy Australian National Maritime Museum Collection.

The surplus could also be used for informal trading, which mostly took place in private because of restrictions on trade. But some people defied the restrictions and by 1790 the rules relaxed and goods were exchanged at public places around The Rocks and what became Circular Quay. The economy worked mostly on barter; exchanges of goods or services or promissory notes. It was a clunky system that drove Miller out of the job after only two years.

When William Bligh arrived to take over as governor in 1806 he tried to tidy up the sometimes dodgy exchanges, many of which were in the form of alcohol, and established an official market place in The Rocks.

An early undated sketch of the original George Street Markets.

Bligh, ousted in 1808 by a coterie of officers who objected to his interference with their free trade, was replaced by Lachlan Macquarie who took over as governor on January 1, 1810. Macquarie was unimpressed by Bligh’s market place and started again. A notice was published in the Sydney Gazette in October 1810 that “The present Marketplace being very badly and inconveniently situated, it is his excellency’s intention to remove the Market very soon to a more commodious and centrical Situation for the Inhabitants of the Town in general. The Place thus intended to remove the Market to is that Piece of open Ground (part of which was lately used by Messrs Blaxland as a Stockyard, & c.) bounded by George-street on the East, York-street on the West. Market-street on the North, and the Burying Ground on the South; and is henceforth to be called ‘Market Square’.”

To make things easier for merchants to deliver their goods from overseas or the rest of the colony (“from the Hawkesbury, & c.”) Macquarie commissioned the building of the Market Wharf at Cockle Bay.

Temporary buildings were erected but in 1820 a Francis Greenway-designed entry was added. In 1830 the original buildings were demolished and new ones built, and part of the Greenway-designed building became the Police Court. Cattle, hay and grain markets were established in the area that became known as Haymarket.

A view of the market Sydney 1857, by Walter G. Mason. Picture: State Library of NSW

The Sydney Market on a Saturday night in 1857, by Walter G. Mason. Picture: State Library of NSW

Sydney Market was both a commercial hub and a social centre, with entertainment and amusements for shoppers. There were also night markets on Saturday.

Although shops and markets had established in outlying towns, such as Parramatta where a market place was established in 1812, many people still made the trek into Sydney to trade and buy things that couldn’t be bought locally or just to be part of the social scene.

In 1842 the running of the market was taken over by the newly incorporated City of Sydney Council, and a new fruit and vegetable market was opened in Campbell St in 1869.

Other operations also moved away from the main Sydney Market as the building decayed. It was finally demolished in the 1880s to make way for a new retail edifice — Queen Victoria Market Buildings, which opened in 1898, offering hundreds of shops in one place.

Women shopping at Paddy's market, Sydney, in 1909. Picture: Argus Collection

Bargain basement of the first Woolworths department store in Sydney's Castlereagh St in 1924.

City fruit and vegetable markets at Haymarket in Sydney in 1958 photo.

This was more up-market than the old market and had less emphasis on produce, but Haymarket had already taken over as the centre for cheap market stalls, sideshows and a more entertaining shopping experience, nicknamed Paddy’s market after St Patrick’s Bazaar in Liverpool in England. In 1914 a new produce market opened in Haymarket.

The 20th century saw the rise of the department store and the all-in-one market store (which later evolved into the supermarket). Coles made its start in Melbourne in 1914 and Woolies in Sydney’s Imperial Arcade in 1924 (on the site now occupied by Westfield).

In 1975 a new Sydney Market was opened at Flemington and the old Paddy’s closed in 1988, to reopen in 1993 in a smaller refurbished space.