Emma Walker in her role as karaoke host.
Emma Walker in her role as volunteer market organiser and general helper where needed.
DURING the week she hosts karaoke, studies for a Diploma in crime and justice and raises her two children.
But on the weekend, once a month, Emma Walker runs a market.
The Canungra Village Markets are held on the second Sunday of each month, at Moriarty Park on Monarch Drive.
From 5am, you’ll find Ms Walker there, usually through to the end of the day.
Not that she is getting paid for her efforts. The markets are a community event, its organiser a volunteer.
So why does she do it?
Born and raised in Canungra, Ms Walker said she liked to put local farmers, growers, crafters and cookers first, and to show off her hometown to visitors.
“I’m at every market from 5am in the morning and stay all day,” she said.
“I like helping people and, as long as the stall holders are happy, I’m happy,” she said.
And she’s always looking at ways to take the market up a gear.
Which is why, about a year ago, she introduced a car boot sale.
From secondhand clothes to old tools, camping gear “and everything in between”, she said the car boots were offering a new experience for buyers and sellers.
Ms Walker said the invitation for people to fill their boots with someone else’s treasure was part of her efforts to bring a bigger variety of wares to the monthly, community-run event.
“Not everyone wants to buy brand new stuff at the market,” she said.
“We have people selling everything from clothes and old tools to camping gear, homewares, photos and everything in between.”
Ms Walker said the car boot sales had been” integrated into the market” about a year ago, and had been slowly building since.
She said at any given market there could be a handful of car boot sales, or up to about 10.
“We’ve been getting quite a few people come in and get rid of stuff and they’ll be back again with more a month or so later,” she said.
While she was working on making the car boot sales “a bigger thing”, Ms Walker said they had already been successful in attracting sellers and buyers from down at the border, to Boonah and up to Beaudesert and Logan.
“It brings a lot of new faces in to come and check out the market, rather than just tourists driving through,” Ms Walker said.
The markets were established in early 2013 and Ms Walker has been running them for the last five years.
