Melbourne in the late 1970s was a city full of life. Its streets, parks, and showgrounds played host to a rotating calendar of events — circuses rolling into town, street festivals drawing crowds, outdoor markets spilling across open ground, and the grand annual spectacle of the Royal Melbourne Show. Photographer Simon Nowicki was there with his camera, and between 1977 and 1978 he captured it all in sharp, honest black and white. His photos are a direct window into what everyday Melburnians did for fun, commerce, and community.
One of the most striking subjects Nowicki documented was the Lennon Brothers Circus. In 1977, the circus brought performers, animals, and the full atmosphere of the big top to Melbourne audiences. The Lennon Brothers were one of Australia’s well-known traveling circus acts, and their shows drew families from across the city. Nowicki’s lens caught the grit and glamour of circus life — the workers, the tents, the performers, and the crowd — all in crisp monochrome.
Away from the circus tent, Melbourne’s streets had their own kind of spectacle. The Lygon Street Italian Festa in 1977 transformed one of the city’s most iconic strips into a celebration of Italian culture. Lygon Street in Carlton had long been the heart of Melbourne’s Italian community, lined with cafes, restaurants, and delicatessens. The Festa brought music, food, and crowds into the open air, and Nowicki captured the energy of the day alongside a glimpse of the Victorian State Parliament, another fixture of Melbourne life that year.
By 1978, Nowicki turned his attention to Melbourne’s outdoor markets. The Caribbean Gardens Market in Scoresby was a popular destination for bargain hunters and browsers alike. Set within the grounds of Caribbean Gardens, the market drew vendors selling everything from secondhand goods to fresh produce and handcrafted items. The relaxed, weekend atmosphere made it a social outing as much as a shopping trip.
Closer to the city, Fawkner Park in South Yarra hosted its own market. A formal Victorian-era park, Fawkner Park was an unusual but fitting backdrop for traders and stall holders. The contrast between the manicured parkland and the informal bustle of the market made for compelling photography, and Nowicki recorded the scene with his usual eye for candid moments.
No survey of Melbourne markets is complete without the Queen Victoria Market. One of the largest open-air markets in the Southern Hemisphere, ‘Vic Market’ has been a Melbourne institution since the 1870s. By 1978, it was already over a century old and still operating at full force — a dense, loud, and colorful place where fresh food, clothing, and general goods changed hands daily. Nowicki’s photos show the market as it functioned in daily life, not posed or cleaned up for the camera.
The Royal Melbourne Show was the biggest event Nowicki photographed during this period. Held annually at the Royal Melbourne Showgrounds in Flemington, the Show has been a fixture of Victorian life since 1848. In 1978, it drew huge crowds eager to see livestock competitions, carnival rides, showbags, wood chopping events, and agricultural displays. The Show brought together city and country in a way that few other events in Victoria managed to do. Nowicki moved through the showgrounds capturing showmen, animals, children on rides, sideshow stalls, and the faces of people simply taking it all in.
Rounding out Nowicki’s collection is a visit to a Trash and Treasure Market in 1978. These markets were exactly what the name suggests — informal, unpredictable, and packed with secondhand goods, cast-off furniture, old tools, and oddities that vendors laid out on tables or spread across the ground. They were a working-class institution in 1970s Melbourne, giving people a place to sell what they no longer needed and buy what they couldn’t afford new. Together, all of Nowicki’s photographs form a detailed record of how Melburnians gathered, traded, and entertained themselves across two remarkable years.
