If you’re not from Sydney, let me let you in on a little secret: if there’s a night time market, we’ll be there. Night Noodle Markets. The markets at Carriageworks where they set everything on fire. The Sydney Fish Market 36 Hour Seafood Marathon. WE LOVE IT. You can’t hold us back from any event in Sydney which actually feels alive after dark. No punching on, just punching prawns.
The Sydney Fish Market marathon is unrivaled in experience in that it’s so alien seeing something so familiar, but beneath the veil of midnight. It’s like going to a bakery at 11pm, or hitting up a kebab shop for brunch. Instead of harsh sun, everything glows green.
I was expecting a frantically busy experience, but I soon remembered it’s always frantic at the Sydney Fish Market. Inside it looked as usual albeit a little more stocked: hurried but capable staff, obscene mounds of prawns, enthusiastic customers. Dewy tinsel dangling above the dank floors pointing downwards at buckets of whole fish. The clammy queue for aburi scallops and midnight mangos. The silent fishing boats and everybody struggling to park amongst the more eager of us dragging stacked eskies of good stuff home.
There were no grand haul plans from me, I only visited for a late, late dinner and to buy some strawberries for a Christmas pavlova: but it’s worth visiting if only to watch people enjoying midnight oysters below the glow of the crammed ANZAC Bridge that gets them there.
