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Four months ago, Bill Duff, the egg man of Richmond’s Gleadell Street Market, handed over the egg stall he ran for 65 years to his son, Scott.

Bill is 83 years old and felt it was time to step back after years of egg-cellent work and early starts. But he is in still in demand as a regular market guest.

“Egg man” Bill Duff with son Scott and grandson MitchCredit: Photo: Eddie Jim.

“When Dad’s here customers will say, ‘It’s good to see you back’.” says Scott, who is now helped by his own sons, Mitch and William. “If he’s not here, so many people say, ‘The market feels different’.”

Duff, famously known at Gleadell Street Market as “the Egg Man” loves a chat or banter, and a slew of customers, including Peter Stathopoulos, have become friends.

Over 30 years, the two men have bonded at this Saturday morning pop-up market in a small street off Bridge Road over their shared love of AFL club Hawthorn, and they’ll rake over the coals of each match.

“We’ll talk about every young player that’s coming up, who have we recruited, how are they looking, how are we going to go this year,” Stathopoulos says.

Peter Stathopoulos, a long time customer at the Gleadell Street Market.Credit: Eddie Jim

Stathopoulos, a music memorabilia retailer who lives in Malvern, says socialising is part of the reason why he buys his greens, and eggs, at this market. “I don’t just buy and leave.”

However, despite the market originating almost a century ago and being 4km east of Melbourne CBD, it’s not well known. “It’s almost like a secret market,” says longtime market worker Frank Patti.

Patti said it hasn’t been well promoted in the past. Two years ago, he and Scott Duff set up Instagram and Facebook accounts for the market.

And next month the City of Yarra is celebrating 150 years of markets in the precinct around Richmond Town Hall, including at Gleadell Street.

Gleadell Street Market in RichmondCredit: Photo: Eddie Jim

In 1873 in nearby Church Street, where today’s Richmond Police station is, the council set up an indoor market in a long shed.

It was moved to Bridge Road in the 1920s and closed in 1972. However, in the 1920s, the council also started a Saturday morning outdoor kerb market, similar to today’s farmers’ markets, a block away in Highett Street.

It was a place for often struggling locals to buy cheap, fresh food.

When he was a child in the 1960s, Richmond and Burnley Historical Society president David Langdon remembers wandering while his mother Joan and older sister Lorraine went off shopping. He’d watch stallholders weigh veggies on big metal scales, memorise prices and calculate what customers owed in their heads. Stallholders would offer Langdon a peach or an apple.
“Sometimes you’d run into your friends from school,” he said. “They are good memories.”

Bill Duff the “egg man” with longtime customer Peter StathopoulosCredit: Photo: Eddie Jim

At 12.45pm, says Landgon, a council officer would ring a bell to flag the Highett Street market’s 1pm closure. It triggered pandemonium.

“People would flock to the stalls to buy the remaining produce,” Langdon says. “It was like seagulls to bacon.

“Everyone tried to get the best buys they could and the stallholders wanted to clear their stock. You certainly got some bargains then.”

Bill Duff, who first worked at the market as a 14-year-old in 1954, opened his own egg and poultry stall in 1958 at Highett Street market.

He would sell live chickens, which customers took home and killed for Sunday roast. There was no food and coffee stall at the market like there are today; shoppers would bring sandwiches and a thermos from home for lunch.

Stallholders would be spruiking to crowds loudly all day. Vegetable sellers would shout: “Honeymoon salad: Lettuce alone” and “Picked by the angels, eaten by the sinners” and Duff, the chook seller, would yell, “Don’t go home without your lunch.”

Duff says his favourite memories of the market relate to people. “You become that friendly with people, they’re like family.”

Scott says former Collingwood player Peter McKenna would buy eggs then stir up his dad as a Hawks fan.

Steven Vaughan, president of community advocacy group Let’s Enhance Gleadell Street, or LEGS, estimates market customer numbers have dropped from about 6000 per week before the COVID-19 pandemic to 3000 or 4000 now.

He said this could be due to factors such as fewer car parking spaces and people getting out of the habit of going to the market during lockdown.

According to the City of Yarra, there are around 20 vacant stalls, out of 65 spots.

But the council is looking at ways to remedy this, through promotion and trialling new stalls selling things like organic vegetables, kombucha, burritos, and gluten-free doughnuts.

Activities at Gleadell Street Market in November will include live bands and historical exhibitions. People can submit their stories about the market to enter a competition.

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