· Camberwell Market Fundraising ·

Last Sunday (03 May 2009), I had a extremely tiring day along with extreme set of fun which made my day a simply very unique experience. I was helping MUDIKA Melbourne in Camberwell Market selling “unwanted stuffs” we had collected over the past 1 month to raise money for MUDIKA activities.

The fun itself was actually began a day before the d-day where some of MUDIKA member’s were gathered and sorted the stuffs. We were allowed to pre-buy the stuffs if we feel we like the stuffs. The stuffs I’m talking about here can be anything, from clothes to shoes, from jacket to even mirrors. Yeah, there were heaps and heaps of unwanted items. I am actually looking for some winter clothes but unfortunately I didn’t find one there but I did find a very nice looking tie (brand new but unwanted). The price is? Can you guys guess? It was 5 dollar AUD for 8 ties, and I am too lazy dividing the number but all I can tell is it’s way too cheap, isn’t that crazy? This scenario is the one that is going to happen in market the very next day.

The market opens around 05.00AM every Sunday and we were planning to get there around this time. I slept around 10.30PM on Saturday which is extremely early for me and woke up around 3.00 AM on Sunday. I was trying to sleep for another hour but I could’nt as a result I got a little dizzy the whole morning. Around 5AM we gathered in 139 which is currently known as MUDIKA’s headquarter and we moved the packed stuffs to the cars. I was in the last car heading to Camberwell Market and the rest were setting up the tables already. We unpacked the boxes, set the stuffs on racks, on the table, and on the floor. So, there’s gonna be 3 categories of stuffs we were selling; 5 dollars on the racks, 2 dollars on the table, and 1 dollars on the floors.

It was as expected that the whole morning wouldn’t be that busy but we still had some customers buying over some stuffs. Around 10AM, the customers were about triple than the one we had in the morning. It was very crowded very busy. I was selling over a dollar stuffs in front of our tables such as ties, shoes, dolls, etc. And say ” a dollar stuff” out loud has made me one of the sellers in the Victoria Market (well, they are saying “A dollar kilo” near the closing).

Around 11.30 which was 45 minutes to closing, we were no longer selling the left over stuffs but we were selling “a plastic bag” for “2 dollars”. Can you even imagine? A plastic bag for 2 dollars and you should be thinking the one who buys this kinda of bag are simply “stupid people”. But, if you are thinking this way then you are simply ‘WRONG”. The one who bought our plastic bags probably the most smartest people ever for that whole Sunday becoz with the plastic bag they bought from us they can fill the bag with any items left on our store. Yes, as many as they could fill it up and I kept saying that whole closing time “You can take the monitor on your bag as well if you could take it”. How crazy that was and probably we were the only one on that market who were selling “a plastic bag”. The price was even further reduced to “a dollar plastic bag” 15 minutes prior to the closing.

When writing this post, I think what I did back on last Sunday was very crazy. We were selling “a plastic bag” for 2 dollars and a dollar after that. The market was closed at 1.30PM.

Shouting almost the whole morning has made me kinda lost my voices. But for me, it was worth it becoz I got a very unique experience that I probably will not forget about. I don’t exactly know how much we had collected from the market but I am very sure that everyone there was having a great time even the customers who happen to just passing by were having their great time seeing bunch of people saying “a dollar stuff” for their items.

It was an extremely very tiring day but extreme fun as well. This concludes my experience for last Sunday (3 May 2009) and this Sunday (10 May 2009) is the Mother’s day here in Australia and I’ll be calling my Mom the very morning. Around noon, I’ll be having a mass blood donation along with other MUDIKA members, hopefully I can share more experience from my upcoming weekends.

PS:

• The complete write-up on Camberwell Market is also available on MUDIKA website and it has a video as well.

Cheerzzzz,,