The Thousands

Adelaide is a city of hidden secrets, and the Antique Market rates highly. Upstairs is – I kid you not – a toy museum. For a shop, this is bizarre: none of the toys are for sale.. Talk about back to the future. Then you go a little further back and find yourself in the vintage clothing section… bustiers, coats, shirts: from secondhand retro vintage to period, this is the place to come when you’re setting up a play or opera, or having a fancy party.

Downstairs, row after row of glass cabinets waving swords, helmets, glassware, china, jewellery, knick-knacks you never knew you needed jostle with photos, prints, rude postcards and dinky toys – these ones are for sale.

Meanwhile, out the back is a little secret. Ssshh! Head down the left lane, up the ramp, out the building and past the shrubbery and into the second building and… on your right, aisle after aisle of books. Thousands of them. The twelve bays of shelves of lit and modern fiction is at the very back, jostling lit biographies and the Jane Austens…The crime is opposite the kiddies and humour, along with poetry and plays… which I suppose is about right. Religion is opposite the science and other -ologies, such as sexology, with eastern religions and… the occult, which is opposite archaeology. Whoever designed this layout had a sense of humour.