Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.Ora Degani is finishing up her weekly shop at the Queen Victoria Market, her shopping trolley laden with bread, fruit, vegetables and fish.
The customers reflect the suburb’s multicultural makeup with large Afghan, Indian, Sri Lankan and Pakistani populations in Dandenong. John and Kevin’s Fresh Seafood, or Buttacavoli’s as it’s known by locals, has already shut up shop for the day.It’s an institution at the market – the only stall still owned by the same owners and trading for over forty years. It also claims to be the only fishmongers in Australia without a freezer.“All the fish they buy from the wholesale markets they sell fresh that day,” says Footscray resident and long-time market shopper Joyce Watts. “Once they’re sold out they shut the shop.
“Have you been here before?” the woman behind the counter at Naheda’s asks. “You have to try the bomb,” she says – a combination of two dips layered in one tub which she describes as “bombtastic”.Trader Gary McBean has been at Prahran Market for 48 years, starting out as an 11-year-old at his father’s butchers shop raking the floor back in the days it was covered in sawdust.
“People are friendly it’s a nice happy environment with good prices,” Goatcher says. “I like the cheaper cuts of stuff and the offal, you can get any part of any animal you want here.”They live in Ivanhoe and drive to the market. Goatcher says she used to shop at the Queen Victoria market but now prefers Preston.
which are so popular that the store has had to set up a special queuing system with ropes like a nightclub.Jacob Pattison