i 9 4 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



more suitable. It has been proposed to clear the whole ground for a square, but the 

 land is very valuable, and the Corporation naturally wants a revenue. At a very early 

 hour in the morning on market days a large business is transacted here by the fruit-sellers, 

 who dispose of their produce to the dealers, and during the clay a considerable retail 

 trade is done at the stalls, while the firms engaged in shipping fruit to the other 

 colonies are actively, employed in making up their packages and dispatching them to the 

 steamers. Sydney is supplied with fresh fruit of some kind all the year round, for not 

 only has it its own double climate of the coast and the table-land to draw upon, but cool 

 Tasmania to the south, tropical Queensland to the north, and Fiji to the east, all send 

 in their contributions. But the gala time for these markets is the Christmas week, 

 when the dingy sheds are made glorious with (lowers and fruit. 



Nothing strikes a visitor from the northern hemisphere so much as the altered 

 character of Christmas wares in Australia. All his usual associations are upset the 

 temperature, the vegetation, the fruits and the flowers seem out of season ; the year is 

 turned upside clown. Let him go into the Sydney Markets in the Christmas week and 

 he will see the people all dressed in light summer costume, and the stalls profusely 

 heaped with summer produce. There are lilies, pelargoniums, fuchsias, hydrangeas, and 

 rhododendrons yielding great clusters of bloom, with here and there some roses left from 

 the wealth of spring. Close to them, stacked in profusion, are apples and pears, plums 

 and nectarines, apricots and peaches, with other garden fruit. A few grapes have been 

 already ripened on some sunny eastern slope, and gathered from a shady patch, where 

 once the mosses grew by the water-side, strawberries ma)- yet remain. Side by side with 

 baskets and boxes of cherries looking as fresh as the product of a Kentish June, 

 melons, pomegranates and figs maintain the semi-tropical aspect of the show, which is 

 further accentuated by huge bunches of bananas hanging aloft, close to bread-fruit and 

 date-plums brought from the neighbouring islands. The vendors of animals seem, from 

 the pains they take with their display, to calculate on a good trade at Christmas ; 

 black-nosed pugs, hairy poodles, monkeys, cockatoos, paroquets, flying-foxes, and even kan- 

 garoos and emus are on view for sale. 



Standing by the main entrance to the Markets, and looking down the avenue past 

 the piled pomegranates and melons, the palms and the pampas-grass, the blaze of colour 

 from the flowers, the pink-tipped green of the Christmas-bush, and the gay-coloured 

 scarves and handkerchiefs of the fancy stalls to the live creatures mewed in cages at 

 the farther end, the scene may seem to a visitor to resemble rather an Eastern bazaar 

 than the market-place of a people of the English race. Yet it is unlike either in fact, 

 it is like nothing else in the world ; it is characteristic of Australian development ; it 

 has come of a prosperous people slowly departing from their old-world, cold-clime notions 

 under the influence of a semi-tropical sky. Even in dress, manners and appearance 

 the people are various, and show in different degrees the influence of new conditions. 

 Fronting the same stall two gentlemen may be seen, the one dark costumed, the other 

 in cool and pleasant white; one wearing a tall silk hat, the other a pith helmet; one in 

 polished boots, the other in canvas shoes. Say not that the one is comfortable and 

 that the other suffers, for there is an appreciable satisfaction in clinging to old-world 

 customs, and the gentleman in broadcloth looks complacent and dignified, though flushed. 



