Almost 30 years after Perth’s Cinema City ran its first movie, the site’s imminent redevelopment has stirred fond memories among those who remember it as a bohemian marketplace.
Almost 30 years after Perth’s Cinema City ran its first movie, the site’s imminent redevelopment has stirred fond memories among those who remember it as a bohemian marketplace.
Before it was levelled to make way for the cinema, the corner of Barrack and Murray streets was home to the Haymarket for a successful year, between 1977 and 1978.
Bought for $1.75 million in 1976 by eastern states-based company Yarralumla Downs Pty Ltd, the two-storey building incorporating the Bon Marche arcade was soon occupied by an 80-stall market selling clothing, records, dogs and cats, pottery, jewellery, antiques and even waterbeds.
Exotic aromas escaped onto Murray Street from Chinese/Burmese, Indian, Malaysian, Mexican, Dutch and vegetarian food stalls.
Former radio journalist Colin Nichol was appointed manager of the Haymarket in November of 1977 and recalls it being Perth’s first food hall and the place where buskers were introduced to the city.
Mr Nichol said some foods were fairly novel as lunchtime snacks at the time.
“Yarralumla had Haymarkets around various cities in Australia, but we came up with something pretty original for Perth,” he told WA Business News.
“There’s lots of talk about Perth not having enough activity, but we already had it and we knocked it on the head.”
On opening, Mr Nichol said the market received a very favourable reception from the City of Perth lord mayor Ernest Lee-Steere and councillors, as well as the state minister for labour and industry, Bill Grayden.
The Haymarket was to trade six days a week including late-night Fridays, while Sundays were off limits.
“It was a real tragedy that it closed. It added so much colour and life to the city...you walked in and instantly were transported to another world,” Mr Nichol said.
Upon returning to Perth in 1977 after 15 years in Europe, Mr Nichol was initially attracted to the Haymarket because of its closed-circuit radio station.
But the building’s managing agent, Jones Lang Wooten, had other ideas and offered him the Haymarket managers’ position.
Mr Nichol recalls the Haymarket being a stiflingly hot place to work during summer, without air-conditioning.
“One day I said ‘to hell with this’, and marched up the stairs and knocked out two windows. After that, the tenants thought I’d turned on the air-conditioning,” he said.
He also remembered a secret door in the manager’s office that led to the street outside, an exit he used often.
By June 1978, the owners of the Haymarket had gone into liquidation and the market was closed later that year.
Mr Nichol said the stallholders tried to rescue the Haymarket by raising money to buy it and finding an alternative site, but to no avail.
After reluctantly leaving the Haymarket, he went on to manage the Subiaco Pavillion Markets and later, the Gosnells Railway markets until 2003.
Mr Nichol said although he was sad the Haymarket was short-lived, he was pleased to see the City of Perth and the Perth Rotary Club had plans for a new market at the Esplanade Train Station next year.
