National Heritage List inscription date 23 July 2018
Queen Victoria Market represents the important role fresh produce markets have played in the development of Australia as an urbanised nation in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Markets played a vital role in establishing the colonies of Australia, allowing population expansion and growth. Queen Victoria Market provides a link to a past way of life and demonstrates how the distribution of the food in cities has evolved.
The market location was previously the site of the Old Melbourne Cemetery, the largest early 19th century colonial cemetery in Australia. The cemetery is unique as it was the burial ground for the entire population of the founding colonial settlement of Melbourne.
Gallery
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Food and culture
The early town of Melbourne was established in 1836 as a colonial outpost of the British Empire. Several open-air public markets had developed in Melbourne from the 1840s, but as the population grew, a more functional and orderly public market was needed as a means of improving conditions in the city.
Queen Victoria Market, established in 1878, contributed to the wealth of the early colony. It provided opportunities for newly arrived immigrants, as well as introducing the colony to new varieties and a cultural diversity of foods. For 140 years Queen Victoria Market has played an important role in the wholesale and later retail trade of meat, fruit and vegetables.
Queen Victoria Market is able to reflect an era of food supply in cities before the impact of major changes in transport, food and agricultural science, marketing and communications revolutionised the distribution of fresh produce in Australia’s metropolitan areas. Developments such as refrigeration, the widespread use of cars and other modes of mass transport, electricity, the telephone, new agricultural practices and improved hygiene have all influenced food distribution in Australia.
Queen Victoria Market is the only nineteenth century market to display all of the building typologies of a market of this time, and is the largest and most intact nineteenth century market in Australia. It continues to operate as a city produce and general market, and exhibits a high degree of social interaction. The Queen Victoria Market still retains many of its original attributes, liveliness and character.
Old Melbourne Cemetery
Before it was the home of the Queen Victoria Market, the site originally served as the first public cemetery for Melbourne. The Old Melbourne Cemetery, formally gazetted in 1839, was the original burial ground for the entire population of the original settlement of Melbourne.
Queen Victoria Market continued to expand over the site of the Old Melbourne Cemetery until 1936, by which time the Cemetery had been completely built over.
The Old Melbourne Cemetery is a rare example of an early multi-denominational cemetery representing virtually the entire founding population of a state capital, including a significantly large representation of the Aboriginal population.
With approximately 6,500 burials it offers rare potential to yield information on the diet, lifestyle, wealth, pathology and burial customs of the full cross-section of early Melbourne society.