Take a giant pineapple, add lots of bursting fruit and vegies, throw in an alpaca, a bit of music and lots of drinks and nibblies and you have the Big Pineapple Growers and Fine Food Market. In the shadow of the eponymous Big Pineapple, just outside Nambour, this cute and vibrant market explodes into life every Saturday, 6.30am to 12.30pm, nestled in the rolling hills and under the wide sky of Sunshine Coast farmland. As an addition to the abundant farmers’ market style sites on the Sunshine Coast, this is a new and excellent offering.

We arrive, mid-morning, to signs saying “Parking Full”, never a good sign for convenience but clearly a popular spot with the locals. The Big Pineapple, in all its old fashioned, giant-fibreglass-thing glory looms over us as we finally squeeze into a parking spot and wander into the buzz of the markets.

A waft of music drew us into the heart of the markets, where we discovered a didge and a guitar attached to two musicians who send out gentle, ambient ripples of Music To Shop By.

It’s all well laid out with wide rows outside in the sunshine and additional stalls under cover. The outside area seems devoted to fresh produce, with a few larger sites offering packaged and processed goods. Inside, there’s a bit of cooking going on and the Parfait Cafe has a gathering throng all looking for its famous Big Pineapple Sundaes. There’s a nice view out the back, looking over the farm’s 400 acres, and seats to enjoy the tucker you can’t resist.

After a reccy, we take a second round and start buying stuff. Some cashews, some fruit, a mango lick for my daughter – she can’t go to any markets without one – and of course a pineapple. The sundaes looked a bit scary to me and not wanting a sundae-spiked 8 year old on my hands, I tried to change the subject and pointed to the Big Pineapple.

Ridgy Didge Music

Not for the first time, the 41 year-old, 16 metre high fruit served as an attention grabber to occupy the kids and save the parents from a blow-out. Nice that it’s free entry again after a crazy period of fee-for-view for the iconic attraction.

We wandered upstairs and, despite my daughter only being there with visiting family just weeks earlier, she was keen to learn more about pineapples and their history. I make a mental note to ensure my daughter gets out more…

Soon, the Big Pineapple will be bolstered in the attraction stakes by the return of some old favourites, like the petting zoo and the sugar cane train, which will presumably take punters on a bit of a tour of the farm, as I believe it used to do.
So, plenty more action for the smaller kids to perhaps buy some time for the big kids to get some stall browsing in.

Emerging from the pineapple, we nearly bumped into an alpaca and its keeper wandered about,  perhaps an introduction to the petting zoo, or perhaps a kind of training exercise for the alpaca to not spit or bite the kids’ heads off.

In the shadow of the beast

Under a pure Sunshine Coast sky, the markets hummed on as we left with our purchases and tried to find our car. The heat was picking up and so we stopped for a moment in the shade. It was only after a minute or two that we realised it was the shadow from the Big Pineapple. Very appropriate.