Final outing for monthly market that gave an 'opportunity to give it a go' for people far and wide

For the past several years, shoppers from far and wide have been heading to a small village each month.

They were seeking the Collector Markets, held in the village off the Federal Highway.

Organiser Gillian Drew was among the early stallholders when it was first launched during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The market was started by a local family that owned the site where the market is, and they happened to be my next-door neighbours,” she said.

“We probably had about five markets in total, but the rules [around COVID-19 safety] kept changing all the time. In the end, they went, ‘OK, it’s too hard, we’re going to close’.

“I was chatting with them – I had all this market stock and kept thinking about getting the markets starting again.”

The original organisers agreed to hand over the administration of the markets to Ms Drew, and the Collector Markets returned to the village.

“We’ve run most months [since then]. The only months we haven’t run was when the weather was just not good for a market day,” she said.

“We dropped maybe two days, three days out of the 24 months.”

Each market was a curated range of stallholders, selected to make sure there was a variety of goods for visitors to shop.

“Our goal was to give local hobbyists and small businesses an opportunity to sell their stuff,” she said.

“I suppose it’s close to my heart – being a small business person myself – that we could give other people a start-up.

“You didn’t have to have a tent, you didn’t have to have a table.

“We just wanted to give people an opportunity to give it a go.”

The goods on offer include jewellery, wines, crocheted and other handmade items, ceramic products and bracelets, Ms Drew’s own eco-friendly products, and more.

“It’s such a good feeling to see people walking out [of the market] with bags of goodies,” she said.

“They’ve had a good day here, and they’re going to explore Collector to do more shopping.”

While some stallholders were adults, others were younger.

“Our youngest might have been eight or nine, and our most consistent one started when she was eight or nine and went through to when she was 11 or 12,” she said.

“They stuck it out, and I think they were glad they did.

“Watching their confidence develop was awesome. They’d be so shy at the start, and then by the end, they were asking ‘How do you want to pay for that’ and ‘Let me get you a bag.'”

The market drew crowds that ranged from Collector locals, day-trippers coming from Goulburn or Canberra and people travelling through the area from Queensland.

“You could never tell who was going to show up – it always varied,” she said.

“Some days it would be really quiet and other days we would have so many people.”

In the years since, Ms Drew said the markets had become a consistent sight each month in the village, offering more than a shopping experience.

“[When I took the market over] I thought, ‘Everyone’s coming out of COVID and sick of being inside and in lockdown,'” she said.

“I wanted to give people a social outlet, support the mental health side of things, get the community going.

“It was really exciting to get the markets going and see people coming and being engaged with them.”

After missing out on further grant funding, Ms Drew said it was time for the markets to come to an end with their November outing this weekend.

“I would say bittersweet is a good term for it! There’s a number of factors that resulted in us needing to wrap it up,” she said.

“It’ll be sad to see it close. It has been really fun; hard work, but fun.”

The final Collector Markets will be held on 16 November between 9 am and 2 pm, at 7 Murray Street in Collector. The village is located on the Federal Highway, between Goulburn and Canberra.