Otara Flea Market

This guide to Otara Flea Market in Auckland traces how a car park behind a shopping centre became the country's largest street market, growing from a small 1976 fundraiser started by Maori and Pacific families resettled into a huge state-housing estate with no gathering place of their own. You'll hear how it grew decade by decade into something closer to a marketplace carried whole from Samoa or Tonga, and the story behind the giant fish-shaped canopy that went up in 1987. Arrive early; the market is already loud with hangi steam and island music well before six in the morning.