After several years of searching for a home for several cabinets of old metal type, an old letterpress printing machine and sundry other items relating to earlier days of the printing industry, a home has been found at the old Classweave factory in North Geelong.

It is planned that with this and other relics of printing days gone by, a living Museum of Printing will be established at the site with the support of Printing Industries Association – Victorian Division.

Since the site has been located, another piece of memorabilia in the shape of a Linotype machine has been donated and was shipped to the Classweave complex on Friday. This is the kind of machine that did the typesetting for newspapers and was most likely one of the machines used to produce the Geelong Advertiser until about 20 years ago. Since computerisation these machines are becoming quite a rarity.

Organisers have put out a call to printers around the country who have machinery and other odds and ends for which they have no further use sitting in the back corner of their machine rooms to consider donating them to the museum.

John Grainger says, “The project, under the auspices of the Museum of Lasting Impressions, is seeking both statewide and nationwide for old machinery with which to set up a living museum so that people may learn from tradespeople, both retired and still active, of the art that went into putting newspapers to bed and the general jobbing work that went on in every town and city, throughout this fair land”.

Likewise, any men or women who have an interest in assisting with the restoration and or demonstration of the equipment (once the museum is opened to the public) should in the first instance contact Don Hauser at dhauser@labyrinth.net.au or alternatively John Grainger at jgrainger@vtown.com.au.

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