I worked on the old Worker Newspaper – the union paper – and all the strikers converged on the Worker, which was opposite the fire station in Castlereagh Street in Sydney. They came to produce a newspaper. It was really interesting to see these journalists working with their typewriters set up on garbage tins on the footpath, typing their stories. When we’d finished our day’s production, all these newspaper linotype operators and machinists would come into the shop at night and produce a paper called the Clarion. 

I’ve still got two copies of the three that were printed at home. We had a big Hoe and Crabtree machine that we used to print the Greyhound Recorder and the Worker on. The Greyhound Recorder was printed on Thursday afternoon and the Worker was done every second Wednesday. 

Half of this machine was covered up in sized paper so it wouldn’t go rusty. They only used to do 12 pages and I think it could do 36 pages. Anyway they uncovered this machine and got it oiled up and the place used to really jump when the whole two decks of the machine were churning out newspaper. 

We had all the carriers that used to go to the Herald and the Sun all converge on the old Worker newspaper. It was total bedlam there for about a week. Then they all went back to work. It was all over. That was a historic moment within the printing industry in Sydney. 

Brian Hyslop 

Print’s Past excepts are drawn from interviews held by Benjamin Thorn, curator of the Armidale Museum of Printing, and are due to be published in a forthcoming book.

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