Most of us can remember what they were doing on the ‘days history was made’ – 9/11, the death of Princess Diana, the Kennedy assassination (still at school, I’d smashed a finger in a door and wouldn’t have been able to sleep even if there hadn’t been Voice of America reports that night for company).
And the day man walked on the moon: It’s hard to recall now how primitive telecommunications were then, compared to what we take for granted today. One thing getting pictures from the moon to the radio telescope in Parkes, NSW ... and another getting to the world’s newspaper and TV outlets.
The ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ tells the story of how photographers from the Fairfax ‘Sun’ and News Limited ‘Daily Mirror’ took pictures from an 18 centimetre NASA monitor at the OTC office in Paddington, Sydney ... and then had to rush the film back to Holt Street for developing and transmission on a picture fax. Fairfax’s Barry Gilmour used a square-format Mamiya camera which would be a collectors’ item today, but the quality was still significantly better than that seen by television viewers, who suffered unknowingly from conversion between incompatible formats.
The weekly newspaper where I was in the UK at the time had little use for the coverage, but we watched the antics of two larger neighbours, both trying to establish new evening titles in the area that year ... using all the same analogue technology. Even wire service was a problem, and one had to make do with a journo in the Press Association office in London to phone down the copy!

And on the subject of days history was made, Goss International sales vice president Peter Kirwan – to whom I spoke on the moon-landing anniversary – will remember where he was when bombers hit two hotels in Jakarta only days before.
In the same city, but happily, about a kilometre away from the bombs. The Indonesian market has been a good one for Goss in the last couple of years, he says, but the terror attacks made an immediate impact on confidence and the local exchange rate. Thankfully, that’s all he had to worry about!

There’s been talk of retirement after “one more project”, but it’s clear that News Limited group technical manager Barry Johnson is still having much too much fun to give it all away quite yet.
Some indication of the years of experience he brings to the role is that the latest upgrade project in News’ currently very busy schedule has led to his twentieth visit to manroland in Augsburg.
Recent projects have included replacing all but one of the Newsman presses at Chullora, the new Hobart plant (see page 14), a complicated upgrade in Adelaide, and the construction of a new press hall in Townsville. “We’re busier now than at any time,” he says.
We haven’t of course, discussed the latest project, but GXpress understands that it’s significant, and in the south. Great that News and its patriarch Rupert Murdoch, continues to invest in newspapers and take a leadership position in the industry. Apart from the press projects, there’s been a substantial systems order for Australia (with vendor DTI) and a commitment to charging for online content which is being eagerly welcomed by others in the industry.

Meanwhile, incoming managing director of the new manroland Australasia operation, Steve Dunwell has found he’s among friends back in the newspaper industry ... and people who remember him.
One surprise was that – during a visit to the sheetfed facility in Offenbach – manroland chairman Gerd Finkbeiner recognised him from his days with Harris: “I remember you at PANPA in Manly and at the Opera House,” he reminisced of an event held in 1984 (thanks to Rod Kirkpatrick for remembering the date, somewhat before my first, at Wrest Point in Hobart).
“That’s some memory,” says Steve, who worked for Datronics – variously Seligson Datronics and Datronics Graphics – until the public company lost interest in the graphic arts in 1984. He then took the Harris Composition (and briefly Harris Web press) agencies to the Media Tech business he set up with Michael Joel.
Apart from the V15, 845 and M110 webs, there were innovations such as selling the first Harris page make-up terminals – of which I mostly recall the UK£89,000 price tag at DRUPA, just before the Mac-PageMaker combo was launched – and Teleram picture fax with its acoustic coupler. Steve found himself giving evidence to the full bench of the arbitration commission over the application by regional daily the ‘Area News’ in Griffith, with Fairfax also involved because of an interest in using it.

With sponsors hard to find in all areas, it was good to see the Currie Group stepping up to replace Agfa Graphics as one of the major supporters of Australia’s National Print Awards.
Over the years, the NPA has been influenced by its importance as a marketing event at which commercial printers entertain – and seek to impress – their clients. Not like the Newspaper of the Year awards at all!
This year’s print awards was the usual glittering gala, with Larry Emdur and Gorgi Quill doing the honours, and no hiding david Currie’s delight in being part of it.

When he’s not selling CTP systems or low-chemistry plates to newspaper users, there’s another side to Fujifilm Australia’s Warren Hinder ... his ‘still moments’. Indeed that’s the title of his new book and an exhibition of landscape photographs being launched in Katoomba by federal MP Bob Debus.
The show at the Nolan on Lovel gallery at the end of this month was the latest product of a passion for fine art photography, and parallels his career in the graphic arts. And while that career has moved on to digital from his beginnings as a litho camera operator, Hinder has stayed true to film for his private passion – Fuji’s Velvia and Provia, of course, teamed with a square-format Hasselblad or 35mm Leica.
The local Blue Mountains area is his inspiration, shot sometimes in colour but mostly black-and-white ... with laborious darkroom time rewarded with the magic of watching an image “take form before your eyes as it sloshes about in the developer”.
If you’ve missed the exhibition, visit his website at warrenhinder.com for a further insight into Hinder’s ‘still moments’.

Pictured: Moments like this - Gorgi Quill waits while a delighted David Currie addresses NPA guests