Appropriately named ‘The River Traders’, this popular weekend attraction is located in an area of riverbank recorded in history as a busy riverside trading site for local Maori, and recognising this, the access to the area was named by early European settlers as Market Place. Enterprising people from our region are proud to be continuing this tradition as they set up in the first light of Saturday mornings, with the misty Whanganui River as their backdrop.

Biggest, best, most wonky, most unusual shape, reddest - it was all in a day's work for the judge of the second annual Monty's Surprise apple competition.

Mark Christensen from Central Tree Crops Research Trust, one of the partners in the Monty's Surprise project, said that despite a rainy day plenty of entries were received for the light-hearted competition, held at the Whanganui River Traders Market on Saturday.

Market-goers stood transfixed by the power of their voices as they sang from La Traviata and danced in the sun with stall-holders. Mayor Annette Main, herself a stall-holder in the farmers market section, said “ It was wonderful to see this group of rising stars emerge from the crowd and begin singing, the sound carried across the river and there were many with tears in their eyes at the sheer beauty of the moment”

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