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Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Dandenong Market, On a Market Day (Tuesday) 1924.

This was before the Market moved to it's present location. The growth and prosperity of Dandenong were closely linked to the success of the markets from the earliest days. The markets originally operated from a site at the corner of Lonsdale and McCrae Streets.

Originally they provided a direct outlet for livestock including beef and dairy cattle, poultry and horses, for fresh market garden and dairy products, and for a wide variety of household, craft and industrial goods and services

The Produce and Goods market, which we know today as the Dandenong Market, moved to its present location on Clow Street around 1926. A sketch plan of the Dandenong Market 1869 showed that there was a produce market at this date. The Produce Market was set between the cattle yards, calf pens, and pig yards with Lonsdale street on one side and McCrae St on the other. Most of the stallholders came from Melbourne suburbs to take advantage of the lucrative trade in bringing city goods to the country market.

Stallholders displayed their wares and the general market day on Tuesdays changed Dandenong from a sleepy town. The streets around the market were cluttered with motor cars, horses and drays, and the pavements and shops were crowded with people busy buying all their weekly requirements.

In 1964 an extra market day proposal was met with antagonism from local retailers. Forty years earlier, shops had been statically placed near the market, but now the market was considered as both old-fashioned and as competition.

The Clow Street site, in the early 1960s was still the location of both the Produce Market and the Showgrounds. For some years the Agricultural Society had been anxious to move to larger grounds. Greaves Reserve, on the other side of Bennett Street from the new livestock market had been allocated for this purpose. The shift was completed by 1967.

The Clow Street site was subsequently redeveloped as a civic centre with municipal offices and council chambers opening officially on 10 February 1968.

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Information courtesy of Jenny Ferguson's Thesis, Thank you Jenny


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