“Once I got here, it took half an hour for me to decide,” Alex says from inside the Kangaroo Island stall in Adelaide’s Central Market. Alex was in property for years and had no expectation of owning a bar/stall.
“I had no hesitation” Anna his wife adds, “he’s always wanted to do something like this”.
Anna maintains her property business, it’s necessary. Hard work and investment of time and money, like all small business, feeds their “passion.”
It’s a kind of return to the market for Alex, his parents owned a stall between 1972 and the mid 1980s.
“Donuts, hotdogs, and ice cream -24 flavours – my cousins, my brother and I, all worked in there as kids” Alex says.
“It’s a 365-degree turn,” Anna is philosophical.
“Dad sill gets involved, he airdries all the fruit,” Alex says and drops two parched blight coloured yellow pineapple slices in my gin.
“Let them soak it up in the gin, then eat them.”
Anna and Alex have two children, Nick the eldest is completing his honours in civil engineering and Christa in year 10.
The couple craved renewal, and this was also an opportunity to satiate their bond with Kangaroo Island.
“It’s a dream I had for years.”
“I’ve always wanted to own a baraki and we have had a history with Kangaroo Island” Alex is animated.
“He’s always wanted to do something like this,” Anna adds.
Customers line up to savour their Kangaroo Island gins, wines, or buy the “world’s best honey” Alex says.
The market is an historic hub of Adelaide’s multicultural heritage and a unique space for fine food and beverages. Next to their Kangaroo Island stall is Con’s Fine Foods a legacy stall set up by the Savvas clan in 1959 leading purveyors of what we once called ‘continental foods’.
The market is in fact a large extended family. Ross Savvas drops in for a gin, and wants to bring a platter of cheeses, and olives.
“Hey if we’re drinking we need meze,” Ross says, he has decided to supply meze for their stall.
As we drink, punters and the market’s characters walk by, stop chat, drink, buy, or agree to come past later.
The market is a haven for fresh produce, aged and cured meats, cheeses, wines, homemade pastas, pastries, breads – Asian and Italian eateries, coffee shops, and bespoke chocolatiers.
Alex studiously mixes a Rhubarb Gin with blood orange and ginger for my partner, and a Wild Gin with passionfruit and elderflower for me.
Languid elegance settles and envelops us as we drink, while market vendors and shoppers hustle around us.
“All Kangaroo Island products are world class, organic wines, world class honey infused of the islands wildflowers, eggs which taste like eggs” Alex is in his element.
Anna and Alex have a relationship with Kangaroo Island. The island which lies off the South Australia coast has unique wildlife, and quality agriproducts.
“We want to buy property there, make it our second home… that’s the dream” Anna says before she exults the virtues of fig syrup from the island.
“We love Kangaroo Island and we were heartbroken when the bushfires tore through,” Alex says.
The 2020 Kangaroo Island fires turned 211,474 hectares of land, about half of the island, into scorched earth. Vast numbers of the island’s wild animals perished, and up to 32,000 head of stock and domestic animals.
The Kangaroo Island stall is also Anna and Alex way of “doing something to help.”
Their new life seems to continue the traditions of their elders, with a renewed confidence.