8 of the best Ballarat markets for one-of-a-kind pieces

Crammed with hard-to-replicate gems and infectious community spirit, every great Ballarat market is worth a morning’s exploration.

An immense Victorian city that maintains small-town country vibes, Ballarat is filled with unexpected charms. While you’ll spend days ticking off the best things to do in Ballarat, and far longer dining at the best restaurants, the enchanting soul of this city is best grasped at a market. Home to seasonal local produce, inspired entrepreneurial ventures and a ton of artisanal craft, these regular (or semi-regular) portals into the livelihood of Ballarat’s residents are nothing short of enthralling. Here, we round up the best Ballarat markets.

1. Ballarat Farmers Market

Two people shopping for vegetables at a market — Shop for fresh veggies.

If you can time your Ballarat holiday to the second or fourth Saturday of the month, you can kiss the task of supermarket stockpiling goodbye. The Ballarat Farmers Market is the ultimate go-to for organic fruit and vegetables, bread and pastries, meats, cheeses, eggs, snacks and even wine, so get there early for a complete spectrum of supplies. There on an empty stomach? Even better, as a coffee van will pour you a fix and hot food like dumplings, Gözleme, and bacon and egg rolls are also on hand. Don’t miss other highlights including kitchen accessories, native plants, homewares and treats for your pet.

Where: North Gardens Reserve, Lake Wendouree

When: Second and fourth Saturday of every month from 9am to 1pm

2. The Bridge Market

A stall at The Bridge Market in Ballarat — Secure gourmet ingredients and delicacies. (Credit: Matt Dunne)

The buzz is unbeatable at The Bridge Market, which pops up along the retail mecca of Bridge Mall and houses a mixed bag of stallholders. It’s technically a farmer’s market, so bring your reusable shopping bags to secure gourmet ingredients and delicacies, but it draws a thick crowd of design lovers who comb the offerings for statement clothing, jewellery and accessories.

Where: Bridge Mall, Ballarat

When: First Saturday of every month from 9am to 1pm

3. The Design Exchange

the building exterior of Ballarat Mining Exchange — The innovative market is housed in the historic Ballarat Mining Exchange. (Credit: Visit Victoria)

An absolute must-schedule if undiscovered artists and independent design talent inspires you, The Design Exchange is a melting pot of creativity. Children’s clothing and toys, gorgeous ceramics, fine jewellery, lounge room brighteners, homemade treats and so much more is bound to tempt you, plus you’re guaranteed to find months’ worth of hard-to-find gifts so don’t leave without stickybeaking every row.

Where: Ballarat Mining Exchange, 12 Lydiard St North, Ballarat

When: Twice annually, so check the website’s Info page for upcoming dates

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4. Ballarat Vintage & Collectables Market

memorabilia at Ballarat Vintage & Collectables Market — Ballarat Vintage & Collectables Market has over 80 stalls with vintage finds and serious collectables. (Credit: Supplied)

Just a 10-minute drive east of the centre of town, the Ballarat Vintage & Collectables Market is unlike any other market in the region. Flowing with vintage finds and serious collectables, stepping into the place feels as though you’re walking through the backdrop of Antiques Roadshow (and the likelihood of striking gold is quite possible, too). Furniture, antiques, old records, retro furnishings, and so more random treasure hunting awaits.

Where: 9367 Western Highway, Warrenheip

When: It’s open every day from 10am to 6pm

5. Avoca Riverside Market

people shopping at the stalls along Avoca Riverside Market, Ballarat — Potter around the stalls filled with baked goods and handmade crafts. (Credit: Visit Melbourne)

An idyllic daytrip from Ballarat, less than one hour’s drive away, the Avoca Riverside Market is a charming collective of stalls. Set on the banks of Avoca River and dotted with river gums, the market invites aimless strolling — that is until you find the local Pyrenees vineyards offering wine tastings. Make a beeline for their stalls if you’re a sucker for top-notch drops (the Pyrenees region of Victoria is renowned for its big reds and sparklings) to help you find a new label to love. There’s also hot food, homewares, a few fruit and veg stalls and plants to peruse.

Where: Avoca River Flats, Cambridge and Dundas Sts, Avoca

When: Fourth Sunday of every month from 9am to 1pm

6. Ballan Farmers Market

a stall selling honey at Ballan Farmers Market — Find homemade goods from more than 25 stalls at Ballan Farmers Market. (Credit: Patrick Bonello)

Run by volunteers determined to showcase their region’s stellar artisans and suppliers, the Ballan Farmers Market is a magnetic morning ritual located about half an hour from Ballarat. As live music lights up the inside of an old church, more than 25 stalls sell a mix of homemade foods and local produce, while the odd candle, soap or craft supplier also makes an appearance.

Where: St Paul’s Uniting Church, 73 Inglis St, Ballan

When: Second Saturday of every month from 9am to 1pm

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7. Smythesdale Country Market

fresh raspberries at Smythesdale Country Market, Ballarat — Take home high-quality fresh fruit. (Image: Getty/JMichl)

A rural village boasting a tight-knit community, Smythesdale features a picture-perfect historical precinct and one of its biggest attractions is the monthly Smythesdale Country Market. You’ll need to zip about 15 minutes’ south-west of Ballarat, but a little road tripping is worth it as more than 40 stalls span super-fresh produce, native plants, artisanal creations and fun initiatives like a ‘beanie battle’ to inspire local craft types. Expect food trucks, coffee vans and plenty of hot food to help keep the good times kicking.

Where: Woady Yaloak Recreation Facility, Smythesdale

When: Third Saturday of every month from 9am to 1pm

8. Talbot Farmers Market

crowds at the Talbot Farmers Market, Ballarat — The bustling scene at the Talbot Farmers Market. (Credit: Visit Victoria)

Drawing solid crowds monthly, the Talbot Farmers Market set the region alight when it burst onto the scene in 2004, serving as one of the first local farmers’ markets. Fast-forward 20-odd years and you’ll be rubbing shoulders with thousands, all equally as eager to uncover the suppliers who have inspired market replicas right throughout the Goldfields region. It goes without saying that BYO bags will be filled with the season’s most peak produce, while jams, chutneys, cheeses and other extremely delectable temptations can’t be ignored. It’s about a 40-minute drive north of Ballarat.

Where: 40 Scandinavian Cres, Talbot

When: Third Sunday of every month from 9am to 1pm

9. Creswick Market

A woman shopping at Creswick Market — Creswick Market is a buzzy hub of activity.

Get your four-legged pal on tour with you? Pile them into the car and set off 20 minutes north of Ballarat in search of Creswick Market. It’s a buzzy hub of activity once a month as stallholders sell everything from olive oils, sauces, jams and honey to arts and crafts, jewellery and clothing. There’s always live music to help set the scene, while a playground and lush gardens also serve to tire out little limbs.

Where: 19-21 Victoria St, Creswick

When: Third Saturday of every month from 9am to 1pm

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Video credit: Visit Victoria/Tourism Australia

The Grampians just might be the ultimate antidote for the metropolis, writes one returning Aussie ready to disconnect from the modern world and reconnect to the Great outdoors.

There are no kangaroos back in Chicago: they’re all here in the Grampians/Gariwerd. In the heart of the Grampians National Park’s main gateway town, Halls Gap, pods of eastern greys are eating grass beside my parked rental car beneath the stars. Next morning, when I see the backyard of my rented villa on the edge of town for the first time, there are kangaroos feeding beside a slow-moving creek, lined with river red gums.

Five hundred metres up the road, 50 or so of them are eating by the side of the road in a paddock. I pull over to watch and spot three emus. Yellow-tailed black cockatoos fly overhead towards the tall green mountains just beyond town.

‘Kee-ow, keee-oww’… their calls fuse with the maniacal cackle of a kookaburra (or 10). Gawd, how I’ve missed the sound of them. Far above, a wedge-tailed eagle watches, and there you go: the ‘great birds of Australia’ trifecta, all half a kay from the town limits.

Exchanging city chaos for country calm

kangaroos near Halls Gap, Grampians National Park — The park is renowned for its significant diversity of native fauna species. (Image: Visit Victoria/Robert Blackburn)

I’ve come to the Grampians to disconnect, but the bush offers a connection of its own. This isn’t just any bush, mind you. The Grampians National Park is iconic for many reasons, mostly for its striking sandstone mountains – five ridges run north to south, with abrupt, orange slopes which tumble right into Halls Gap – and for the fact there’s 20,000 years of traditional rock art. Across these mountains there are more than 200 recorded sites to see, created by the Djab Wurrung, Jardwadjali and Gunditjmara peoples. It’s just like our outback… but three hours from Melbourne.

I’ve come here for a chance at renewal after the chaos of my life in America’s third-largest city, Chicago, where I live for now, at the whim of a relative’s cancer journey. Flying into Melbourne’s airport, it only takes an hour’s drive to feel far away from any concept of suburbia. When I arrive in Halls Gap two hours later, the restaurant I’m eating at clears out entirely by 7:45pm; Chicago already feels a lifetime ago.

The trails and treasures of the Grampians

sunrise at Grampians National Park /Gariwerd — Grampians National Park /Gariwerd covers almost 2000 square kilometres. (Image: Ben Savage)

Though the national park covers almost 2000 square kilometres, its best-known landmarks are remarkably easy to access. From my carpark here, among the cockatoos and kangaroos on the fringe of Halls Gap, it only takes 60 seconds’ driving time before I’m winding my way up a steep road through rainforest, deep into the mountains.

Then it’s five minutes more to a carpark that serves as a trailhead for a hike to one of the park’s best vantage points, The Pinnacles. I walk for an hour or so, reacquainting myself with the smells and the sounds of the Aussie bush, before I reach it: a sheer cliff’s edge lookout 500 metres up above Halls Gap.

walking through a cave, Hollow Mountain — Overlooking the vast Grampians landscape from Hollow Mountain. (Image: Robert Blackburn)

There are hikes and there are lookouts and waterfalls all across this part of the park near town. Some are a short stroll from a carpark; others involve long, arduous hikes through forest. The longest is the Grampians Peaks Trail, Victoria’s newest and longest iconic walk, which runs 160 kilometres – the entire length of Grampians National Park.

Local activities operator Absolute Outdoors shows me glimpses of the trail. The company’s owner, Adrian Manikas, says it’s the best walk he’s done in Australia. He says he’s worked in national parks across the world, but this was the one he wanted to bring his children up in.

“There’s something about the Grampians,” he says, as he leads me up a path to where there’s wooden platforms for tents, beside a hut looking straight out across western Victoria from a kilometre up in the sky (these are part of the guided hiking options for the trail). “There are things out here that you won’t see anywhere else in Australia.” Last summer, 80 per cent of the park was damaged by bushfire, but Manikas shows me its regrowth, and tells me of the manic effort put in by volunteers from town – with firefighters from all over Australia – to help save Halls Gap.

wildflowers in Grampians National Park — Spot wildflowers. (Image: Visit Victoria)

We drive back down to Halls Gap at dusk to abseil down a mountain under the stars, a few minutes’ walk off the main road into town. We have headlamps, but a full moon is enough to light my way down. It takes blind faith to walk backwards down a mountain into a black void, though the upside is I can’t see the extent of my descent.

Grampians National Park at sunset. (Image: Wine Australian)

The stargazing is ruined by the moon, of course, but you should see how its glow lights up the orange of the sandstone, like in a theme park. When I’m done, I stand on a rocky plateau drinking hot chocolate and listening to the Aussie animals who prefer nighttime. I can see the streets of Halls Gap off in the distance on this Friday night. The restaurants may stay open until 8pm tonight.

What else is on offer in The Grampians?

a boat travelling along the Wimmera River inDimboola — Travelling along the Wimmera River in Dimboola. (Image: Chris McConville)

You’ll find all sorts of adventures out here – from rock climbing to canoeing to hiking – but there’s more to the Grampians than a couple of thousand square kilometres of trees and mountains. Halls Gap may be known to most people, but what of Pomonal, and Dimboola, and Horsham? Here in the shadow of those big sandstone mountains there are towns and communities most of us don’t know to visit.

And who knew that the Grampians is home to Victoria’s most underrated wine region? My disconnection this morning comes not in a forest, but in the tasting rooms and winery restaurants of the district. Like Pomonal Estate, barely 10 minutes’ drive east of Halls Gap, where UK-born chef Dean Sibthorp prepares a locally caught barramundi with lentil, pumpkin and finger lime in a restaurant beside the vines at the base of the Grampians. Husband-and-wife team Pep and Adam Atchison tell me stories as they pour their prize wines (shiraz is the hero in these parts).

dining at Pomonal Estate — Dine in a restaurant beside vines at Pomonal Estate. (Image: Tourism Australia)

Three minutes’ drive back down the road, long-time mates Hadyn Black and Darcy Naunton run an eclectic cellar door out of a corrugated iron shed, near downtown Pomonal. The Christmas before last, half the houses in Pomonal burnt down in a bushfire, but these locals are a resilient lot.

The fires also didn’t stop the construction of the first art centre in Australia dedicated to environmental art in a nature-based precinct a little further down the road (that’s Wama – the National Centre for Environmental Arts), which opened in July. And some of the world’s oldest and rarest grape vines have survived 160 years at Best’s Wines, outside the heritage town of Great Western. There’s plantings here from the year 1868, and there’s wines stored in century-old barrels within 150-year-old tunnels beneath the tasting room. On the other side of town, Seppelt Wines’ roots go back to 1865. They’re both only a 30-minute drive from Halls Gap.

Salingers of Great Western — Great Western is a charming heritage town. (Image: Griffin Simm)

There’s more to explore yet; I drive through tiny historic towns that barely make the map. Still part of the Grampians, they’re as pretty as the mountains behind them: full of late 19th-century/early 20th-century post offices, government offices and bank buildings, converted now to all manner of bric-a-brac stores and cafes.

The Imaginarium is one, in quirky Dimboola, where I sleep in the manager’s residence of an old National Australia Bank after a gourmet dinner at the local golf club, run by noted chef and teacher, Cat Clarke – a pioneer of modern Indigenous Australian cooking. Just south, I spend an entire afternoon at a winery, Norton Estate Wines, set on rolling calico-coloured hills that make me think of Tuscany, chit-chatting with owners Chris and Sam Spence.

Being here takes me back two decades, when I lived here for a time. It had all seemed as foreign as if I’d driven to another planet back then (from Sydney/Warrane), but there seemed something inherently and immediately good about this place, like I’d lived here before.

And it’s the Australian small-town familiarity of the Grampians that offers me connection back to my own country. Even in the better-known Halls Gap, Liz from Kerrie’s Creations knows I like my lattes with soy milk and one sugar. And while I never do get the name of the lady at the local Ampol station, I sure know a lot about her life.

Kookaburras on a tree — Kookaburras are one of some 230 bird species. (Image: Darren Donlen)

You can be a local here in a day; how good is that? In Chicago, I don’t even know who my neighbour is. Though each day at dusk – when the kangaroos gather outside my villa, and the kookaburras and the black cockatoos shout out loud before settling in to sleep – I prefer the quieter connection I get out there in the bush, beneath these orange mountains.

A traveller’s checklist

Staying there

Sleep beside the wildlife on the edge of Halls Gap at Serenity.

Playing there

abseiling down Hollow Mountain — Hollow Mountain is a popular abseiling site.

Go abseiling under the stars or join a guided hike with Absolute Outdoors. Visit Wama, Australia’s first environmental art centre. Check out Dimboola’s eccentric Imaginarium.

Eating there

steak, naan bread and beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap — Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap serves a great steak on naan bread.

Eat world-class cuisine at Pomonal Estate. Dine and stay at much-revered icon Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld. The ‘steak on naan’ at Halls Gap brewhouse Paper Scissors Rock, can’t be beat.

Dunkeld Arboretum in Grampians National Park — The serene Dunkeld Arboretum.

For Halls Gap’s best breakfasts head to Livefast Cafe. Sip local wines at Great Western’s historic wineries, Best’s Wines, Seppelt Wines and Norton Estate Wines.

two glasses of beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap — Sink a cold one at Paper Scissors Rock.

8 of the best Ballarat markets for one-of-a-kind pieces

Crammed with hard-to-replicate gems and infectious community spirit, every great Ballarat market is worth a morning’s exploration.

1. Ballarat Farmers Market

2. The Bridge Market

3. The Design Exchange

4. Ballarat Vintage & Collectables Market

5. Avoca Riverside Market

6. Ballan Farmers Market

7. Smythesdale Country Market

8. Talbot Farmers Market

9. Creswick Market

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This scenic Victorian region is the perfect antidote to city life

The Grampians just might be the ultimate antidote for the metropolis, writes one returning Aussie ready to disconnect from the modern world and reconnect to the Great outdoors.

Exchanging city chaos for country calm

The trails and treasures of the Grampians

What else is on offer in The Grampians?

A traveller’s checklist

Staying there

Playing there

Eating there

Crammed with hard-to-replicate gems and infectious community spirit, every great Ballarat market is worth a morning’s exploration.

1. Ballarat Farmers Market

2. The Bridge Market

3. The Design Exchange

AI Prompt

4. Ballarat Vintage & Collectables Market

5. Avoca Riverside Market

6. Ballan Farmers Market

7. Smythesdale Country Market

8. Talbot Farmers Market

9. Creswick Market

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Two of the best festivals are coming to Ballarat: here’s how to plan for them

This surprising city has dethroned Adelaide as Australia’s happiest

Meet the makers shaping Ballarat’s new era of creativity

The Grampians just might be the ultimate antidote for the metropolis, writes one returning Aussie ready to disconnect from the modern world and reconnect to the Great outdoors.

Exchanging city chaos for country calm

The trails and treasures of the Grampians

What else is on offer in The Grampians?

A traveller’s checklist

Staying there

Playing there

Eating there