Thanks to Kevin Brown for sending these pictures in. Kevin says: “I did my apprenticeship for the Dominion Newspaper, it was a morning paper in Wellington, New Zealand, printed six days a week and we also printed a Sunday paper called the Sunday Times. Copies were sent to most places in the north and south island every day, a truck left Wellington every morning with the first edition and drove up to Auckland.
I took a lot of the pics in 1975, I was working on the day shift, but on the last night that the paper was going to be printed in the old Mercer Street Dominion building I went in and took some pics, that’s why you see people gathering together for me to take the shots and that was 1976.
The Dominion then shifted across the road to Press House which printed the Evening Post, which was a Daily. They amalgamated and now only print one daily called the Dominion Post.
I worked night shift before eventually going on to days, and worked on the TTS machines, we used Elektrons if I remember correctly, I left the paper in 1978, so it was a long time ago. When we went to Press House they started phasing out the linos, and I remember they got this computer called a Harris 2000, which was huge. When we shifted across the road the paper was still being printed using the linos and it would have been the mid 80s that they changed over, I guess, I wasn’t there at the time.”
Additional caption information has been supplied by John Nixon.
Some wonderful photographs there by Kevin Brown. I worked there from 1972 to 1974 and recognise quite a few of the faces. I have a few slide photographs from around 1971 which include photos of Long John Smith and Algie O’Connors brother where we have taken a boat out on Marlborough sounds. It was a great few days and we caught plenty of fish and had a few beers.
Started work there in 1968. Brings back many great memories. Even met my wife Rita (Linotype operator) there, and 42 years later, we’re parents of six and grandparents to eight. Now live in Australia since 1979.