A Saturday market in a churchyard since 1973, where a good number of Australian fashion labels started.
Running in the grounds of the Paddington Uniting Church every Saturday since 1973, when it began as a hippy market, this is where a number of Australian designers first sold.
Zimmermann, Dinosaur Designs, Collette Dinnigan and Akira Isogawa all had early stalls here, and the market still leans towards independent fashion, jewellery and design rather than bric-a-brac.
Around 150 stalls: clothing, ceramics, prints, leather, plants, food, and a section for emerging designers.
Paddington
The suburb around it is the best surviving Victorian terrace district in Australia — narrow two-storey houses with cast-iron lace verandahs, built in the 1870s and 1880s for artisans, slated for demolition in the 1960s, and now among the most expensive property in the country.
Five Ways, a junction of five streets with a pub on the corner, is the pretty centre of it. Paddington Reservoir Gardens on Oxford Street is a decommissioned 1866 water reservoir turned into a sunken garden, with the brick vaults and iron columns left standing — an unusual and excellent piece of adaptive reuse, and free.
The galleries
Paddington and neighbouring Woollahra hold a concentration of commercial art galleries — Roslyn Oxley9, Sullivan+Strumpf, Olsen, Australian Galleries — most free and most open Tuesday to Saturday. This is where Australian contemporary art is sold.
Oxford Street
Runs from the city through Darlinghurst and Paddington to Bondi Junction. It was the centre of Sydney’s gay nightlife and remains the route of the Mardi Gras parade.
The strip declined markedly after the lockout laws of 2014, which imposed 1.30am entry restrictions and 3am last drinks across the inner city in response to alcohol-related violence. They were repealed for most areas in 2020 and 2021, and the nightlife has been slowly returning since.
Practicalities
Saturdays only, roughly 10am to 4pm, all year.
Buses 333, 440 and others run along Oxford Street from the CBD. No train — Bondi Junction is a twenty-minute walk east.
The other markets
Carriageworks on Saturday mornings for produce — the best farmers’ market in the city.
Glebe Markets on Saturdays for secondhand and vintage. Rozelle Collectors Market on Sundays. Bondi Markets on Sundays in the school grounds.
