From a “Proposed Trash and Treasure Market” to a Rotary Club LegacyOn Sunday 6 November 1977, in perfect weather, 73 stallholders and 3,340 paying pedestrians turned up to the first Bentleigh Sunday Market. The day raised $952. Few could have guessed they were starting what our club history calls “probably the singularly most significant project” we have ever undertaken.
The market had hard-won beginning's it was not handed to us. Approval from the City of Moorabbin depended on the support of the Bentleigh Chamber of Commerce, which stayed silent and then fought us once the project gained momentum. Our members answered with a detailed submission to every Councillor, and the result was a unanimous vote in favour of the Club using the Bent Street site.
The market was built by volunteers and when it was noted that it needed about $4,000 to start, and members underwrote it with $2,000 in personal loans. A small committee worked tirelessly on advertising, leaflets, posters, fencing and insurance. By Christmas 1977 the market had received $4,134.08 and every debt was cleared.
The challenges kept coming: rubbish, new regulations, a petition to the Council, and a rival market proposal. Each time the club prevailed, helped by the fact that our market exists solely for charity. By the time of a 1982 public debate, we could show $88,000 donated to charitable causes from a market that had grossed more than $96,000. “When the State Government amended the Labour & Industry Act in 1980, the club secured an exemption in 1981 (gazetted on 14 July 1981 and updated in February 1982), allowing the market to keep trading.”
The market also gave back to Rotarians it came in the form of fellowship. As the club history notes, it is amazing how well you get to know a fellow Rotarian after five or six hours on market duty.
The market also gave back to Rotarians it came in the form of fellowship. As the club history notes, it is amazing how well you get to know a fellow Rotarian after five or six hours on market duty.
Those early members put in their own money, their early mornings and their persistence. They won over a Council and a hostile Chamber of Commerce, and handed us a market that has funded charity and built friendships for decades. We did not earn that legacy, but we are its keepers. Every Sunday we run the market, and every dollar it raises for the charitable works, carries on what they began. Let’s pitch in and look after it, so that whoever reads our history in another 40 years can say we were worthy of it.
