The third Saturday of every month, a market called Hunt & Gather takes place in downtown Newcastle.
We’ve come in contact with this through one of Linnea’s university courses, the one called Furniture, form and function. The assignment for the whole semester in that course is to create a furniture piece that could be sold at that specific market. So naturally, when the first market day of the semester came around we went to check it out. Honestly, this type of field research is incredibly fun!
Even though our main objective was simply to observe the market and talk to a couple of stall owners, we ended up staying for a big portion of the day. The reason being that we were having a great time. We ran into some of Linnea’s classmates and also the two sisters that are the masterminds behind the market (they held a lecture for Linnea’s course, so she recognized them at the market). We talked with them for a while, then had lunch at the market, after that Linnea got a henna tattoo in one of the stalls, we got some coffee and continued going around the stalls and talking to the owners… A lot of them felt excited talking about their experiences and knowledge of the market.
After shopping some clothes in one of the stalls, we felt tired and decided on heading towards Newcastle beach, which is less than 5 minutes walking distance from the market. But before we had time to make our exit, a guy at a table asked if we wouldn’t mind being painted by him for a ‘cartoon census’ that was taking place that day. We said sure and sat down for a while, talking to the guy as he painted. The guy’s name is Ben Mitchell and apparently, he has a class at UoN in graphic design which Gustav thought about taking when we were selecting our courses. The world feels very small sometimes.
Happy with that we had taken part, we headed towards the beach. There we sat down in the sand and contemplated for a bit what a wonderful Saturday it was. We sat there until the sun was about to go down, then we felt like it was time to head on home. But we’ll definitely go back to the market before our time in Australia is up, you can count on that.
Hugs,
Linnea & Gustav