Don Hauser’s fascinating story of a lifetime in the print industry.
Taken from Don Hauser’s book “Printers of the Streets and Lanes of Melbourne” this is the story of Don’s lifetime career in print from 1949 to the present day.
In grade five at Tyler Street primary school, Preston, my first newspaper, The Weekly Trumpet, was hand lettered on quarto paper and pinned to the class notice board. About this time my mother bought her first washing machine, a Hoover with a fold-away hand-wringer. “What a perfect way to run off a few copies of the Trumpet and sell them to the kids” I thought! But something went terribly wrong. Instead of the violet hectograph-inked paper-master soaked in methylated spirits transferring onto white paper, it ended up on the wringers of mother’s new pride and joy! The Weekly Trumpet appeared on whites and coloureds for weeks until the image disappeared.
At Northcote Boys’ High School in form 2c I began the Two Cee Gazette a hand-written and illustrated paper that appeared on the form notice-board. John Daniel, another boy in the same form, started a rival 2c Star. Mr Dean, our English master of the day, (known to the boys as “Clipper” for his frequent clipping of young ears) spotted the educational benefit and suggested “a merger”. The result was the Associated Newspapers Magazine. We were allowed restricted use of the school’s Gestetner duplicator and Banda spirit duplicator; now we could print supplements and feature pages in living colour! John Daniel and I alternated as editor and deputy editor.
The paper continued but while I was in form three my father died after a long illness. Our family moved to Surrey Hills and I was sent to Camberwell High School. My new co-educational school environment failed to interest me on any level. I was a sorry lad and wished to conclude my schooling.
My mother, widowed and apprehensive, gave me her permission to leave Camberwell High School and find an apprenticeship in printing.
Arthur L. Edgerton, printers and envelope makers of City Road, South Melbourne employed me on probation as an apprentice hand-compositor. Edgertons specialised in producing envelopes of every description! I soon discovered that six years of hand setting “if not claimed within seven days, please return to” was not my idea of typographical skill! Furthermore, I didn’t endear myself to my employer when ink remover that I was using to clean varnish off a Heidelberg platen press (varnish used to print the translucent windows on envelopes) leaked through the floorboards onto a brand new red Chevrolet Bel Air sedan in the workshop below. A shiny metallic hole appeared through several layers of new enamel paintwork.
Robert Schurmann ran a commercial art studio in Swan Street, Richmond. He prepared finished artwork for retail advertisements for newspapers using photographic bromide prints and typeset patches from type he stored in matchbox trays and proofed on a small Adana hand press. He also taught typographical design part-time at the Melbourne School of Printing and Graphic Arts then located at Melbourne Technical College, building number 4 in Bowen Street. He learned that I was looking for an apprenticeship and arranged for me to visit Exchange Press in Spencer Street for an interview.
Exchange Press
I started there, again on probation, with apprenticeship in view. The pay was three pounds, two shillings and sixpence per week with a five shilling increase in my first apprentice year. My new-found skill in typesetting if not claimed etc. in size eight point meant that I could easily set up my first job, a wedding invitation … Mr & Mrs Brown request the pleasure of the company of etc … in size twelve point wedding text without requiring any tuition.
Bill Hewitt, a tall distinguished looking man was the composing room foreman with excellent teaching skills and outstanding ability as a typographer and designer. Bill Hewitt was a father figure to me and I believe that he recognised this and gladly passed on his many skills for my benefit.
Archie Campbell was a fine compositor and linotype operator. On my first day, he advised me to leave my lunch high on a shelf to avoid having it mauled by rats — on the same shelf as the weeks old milk in glass bottles. From that day to this, my tea has remained black.
Subsequently, I became an indentured apprentice, bound to Exchange Press at 263 Spencer Street, Melbourne. On 31 October, 1952, J. H. (Alan) Eaton, managing director, John Bennett, company secretary, my mother Isobel and I were in attendance to sign my indentures. The term was six years and at the age of fourteen and a half, this seemed to me like the term of my natural life. I had become an apprentice hand and machine (linotype) compositor.
From day one it was abundantly clear to me that the junior apprentice (or worse, the provisional junior apprentice), got the “shit jobs” until such time that one was replaced by someone who was more junior.
Sweeping the composing room floor, cleaning the two pot-bellied stoves and setting their fires in the winter, getting the lunches, making the tea in a grubby aluminium teapot; this was all first year apprentice work. We were told that this work was “character building”.
Linotype metal was recycled by melting the used lead in a gas fired “metal pot” in a grubby corrugated iron shed in the backyard. The metal was then ladled into ingot shaped moulds. During a downpour, rain leaked through holes in the roof into the molten lead filled crucible spattering lead over my dustcoat and face if I wasn’t careful. I felt akin to 500 years of printers’ devils.
Any chance to learn was always interrupted by being sent on messages all over town. Pick up some type, run down to Hudson’s Stores in Bourke Street for a tube of glue, deliver a proof to the always dapper Alf Cheel at the Claude Mooney Advertising agency in the Temple Court building in Collins Street.
Once a month, I was given the union dues in a bag and sixpence for tram fares to take to the Printing and Allied Trades Employees Union in the Trades Hall. Of course I pocketed the fare and ran like fury through the Flagstaff Gardens and down Franklin Street to Lygon Street, up the stairs to the first floor almost collapsing from exhaustion. The kindly Ernie Heintz (father of Alby Heintz) sat me down with a cup of black tea before the return sprint.
Getting the lunches involved crossing Spencer Street and taking a deep breath passing the smelly hide and skin store on the corner of Spencer and Little Lon. (now the site of the Age editorial department) and walking the block to the lunch shop in King Street. My senior colleague John Grainger quite enjoyed a midday walk in the fresh air and agreed to share the task on alternate days.
As time progressed I became more proficient at hand setting lead type from dusty typecases or drawers into a composing “stick” or hand-held tray; handsetting matrices and casting lines of lead display type in a Ludlow Typograph. Later, I was let loose on Ottmar Mergcnthaler’s previously mentioned amazing Linotype machine. Invented in 1884, this machine completely revolutionised the typesetting of newspapers, books and journals. A fast operator could keyboard ten newspaper ten em column lines per minute. Never having had time to practise on only one available machine, I suppose that I achieved no more than about four lines a minute.
The personnel at Exchange Press were a good crew. They consisted mainly of journeymen printers, compositors and an assortment of bindery ladies, travellers and office workers. To a young apprentice, they were a source of learning and fun.
Henry Cole, white-haired, quiet and stooped from years working a paper cutter, taught me about paper types and sizes and showed me how to fan-out and count sheets by fives.
Production manager Norm Hillard once played Australian Football for Fitzroy when they were called the Maroons. Les (Wacker) Wells ran the despatch department. A Fitzroy stallwart, Wacker served the oranges at quarter and three-quarter time every Saturday.
Eddie Wittenberg, an immigrant from war torn Hungary, joined the firm briefly as a hand compositor/linotype operator. Eddie later bought into and developed a small printery called Abaris Printing. Today Abaris is the last of Melbourne’s large printers and will soon move to the western suburbs.
Bertie Bridgeland set up his chair next to his Kelly printing press to provide lunchtime haircuts for “a bob” (a shilling or ten cents). The managing director was a regular customer.
During the composing apprenticeship, we worked with lead type, lead and wood spacing covered in lead dust and stereotypes made of lead. Whether the long term ingestion of lead is attributable to my average state of health will never be known. However it was never my plan to remain “on the bench” as a journeyman compositor. I moved on to a new position the day after my indentures expired. A little thoughtless I considered in retrospect.
Gold bronzing meant dusting powdered bronze powder to sheets printed with a tacky slow drying ink. The dust drifted everywhere into eyes, clothes and ingested into lungs. One would be given money to buy a half pint of milk apparently to absorb the dreaded dust and line ones stomach and gut.
Learning a trade always involved observing, listening, trying out new skills, studying and having the manual and mental dexterity to skilfully handle materials, equipment, machinery and respect raw and sometimes dangerous materials.
Melbourne School of Printing and Graphic Arts
The first contact I had with the Melbourne School of Printing and Graphic Arts as it was then known, was at an interview in September, 1951 with Wally Wolsenholm who taught English and maths at the old school building in Queensberry Street, North Melbourne. The purpose of the interview was to establish that I was a suitable candidate for apprenticeship to Exchange Press.
The following year I began day school, a half day per fortnight plus two nights a week, at Melbourne Technical College, Bowen Street (off Latrobe Street), until 1945 known as the Working Mens’ College. I trudged the well-worn staircase in the old Gothic building No. 4 for three years until the letterpress printing department moved to the new building in Queensberry Street, North Melbourne.
Frank Matthias was the head of the letterpress department at Bowen Street and James E. (Jim) Turney, the senior composing instructor.
Frank Woodlock taught science, maths and English; Percy Ludgate, Monotype keyboard and caster. At night school, Frank Campbell, a wartime airman, taught typographical design. He was assisted part time by Bob Schurmann.
For the first half of my first year, I was far from being a high achiever. I recall a test result of 17 per cent for maths. Following a very strong pep talk from Mr Woodlock, I improved my end of year mark for maths to 97 per cent and went on to take overall first prize for first, second and third years. In addition, I earned several prizes and bronze medallions for scholastic and craftsmanship awards. In 1959, I was awarded a Victorian Overseas Foundation travelling scholarship which provided the opportunity to gain work experience in USA and England for two and a half years. To my sorrow, Frank Woodlock died before I ever considered or found the opportunity to thank him for his trust in my ability to improve and succeed.
In 1956, the letterpress department moved from Bowen Street to the new building located behind the original state school in Queensberry Street, North Melbourne. The building was officially opened by the Governor of Victoria, Sir Dallas Brooks on Thursday, 27 March, 1958. I continued my apprenticeship studies at North Melbourne as a linotype operator with Gordon Castle and later completed advanced courses at the college.
The Glass Door
A key plank of Jim Turney’s tuition was, at least for his more aspiring students, to progress to somewhere “behind the glass door” distanced from the lead, the machinery and the noise to a collar and tie job in typographical design, sales, planning and estimating or general management. Turney, a skilled compositor, served his apprenticeship with Osboldstone & Co. prior to his appointment as a technical teacher in 1937. His accomplishments as a teacher, his strong character, his friendship and his dry humour are remembered by many hundreds of his students. Jim’s retirement was marked at a dinner arranged by past and present students at Menzies Hotel on 30 September, 1968.
The school principal, John Lodge, came from the English Midlands and was well qualified to head a printing educational institution. He was assisted by department heads, Bill Brown, Jim Turney, Bill Glasson and Ray Stratford. John Lodge and his senior staff played a very large part in planning and re-equipping the new school in Queensberry Street with the latest technology of the day. Clearly, the MSP&GA was then the best equipped polytechnic printing school in the world. As a student there, I deemed it a privilege.
Returning from overseas, I worked for a year with the D. W. Paterson Company as a film make up compositor. Newly married to Jill Wilson whom I met in London, I joined the production department of USP Benson Advertising and later, with Jackson Wain Advertising as production manager for five years.
Opportunity knocks and another leaf in the book
Opportunity knocked when my job was terminated after Jackson Wain was acquired by Leo Burnett Advertising of Chicago. By March 1971, I commenced work as a printing consultant in a shared office at 564 St. Kilda Road. With a supportive partner, three children, a mortgage plus the accompanying businesss expenses there were a few worrying months but the decision to risk everything paid off.
We moved to rented premises in Jolimont in 1975 and purchased our own property in 1982. John Naismith, Peter Campbell, Julie Perium, Jane Stokie, Melinda Traves, Helen Grieve, Megan O’Neil, Graham Radford, Debbie Friedrich, my wife Jill and daughter Amanda all worked here over a period of time. We were a part of a small family business helping to service some blue ribbon customers including ANZ Bank, Australian Dairy Produce Board, Michaelis Bayley Plastics, Dulux Australia, BHP, IOOF, Financial Synergy and Council of Adult Education.
As a buyer of print in my advertising agency days, I learned the skills and benefits of “desktop printing” which largely meant providing a personal, reliable and cost effective service underwriting and managing creative, pre-press services and supervising the final printed product sub-contracted to outside sources.
35 years later we are retired and enjoying grandchildren and the fruits of our labour. Suffice to say that the preceding years provided the memories and much of the data for this book.
Did you enjoy this story? If so, you may be interested to know that it appears in “Printers’ Tales” available as a paperback or ebook.