AFTER more than 50 years, the Rotary Club of Swan Hill will hold its last Country Market in November.
Held on the third Sunday of each month in the Railway Station car park, the trash and treasure market has been one of the service club’s major fundraisers, collecting significant sums to support local charities since the 1970s.
Rotary President Damian Kelly said the decision was based on falling patronage and the difficulty “more mature” members were having with lifting and moving equipment and boxes of items for the Rotary stall.
When he joined the club in 2018, Mr Kelly said the whole car park would be filled with stallholders and bargain hunters.
The market was unable to operate during the pandemic – it was not deemed an essential service – and while a small number of regular stallholders attended the Easter market in April, there were few shoppers.
“We thought we might have got more people coming to that market,” Mr Kelly said.
“The stallholders were probably lucky to break even so we didn’t charge them for site fees.”
After consulting with stallholders, the market went into recess over winter and club members voted last month to wind it up, with a final market scheduled for November 20.
Before then, the club will have a stall selling books and CDs alongside the Sunrise Rotary barbecue at the Swan Hill Inc Market Day in Campbell Street on October 22.
