Bendigo Advertiser rebuilds after devastating fire

Celebrating the new Pall Mall Building

Recently David, one of our team of dedicated volunteers, was tasked with cataloguing the ‘Bendigo Advertiser Reconstruction Supplement printed in February 1963. This eight-page supplement complete with colour photos was printed to celebrate the opening of the new Bendigo Advertiser premises in Pall Mall.

Following a devasting fire in July 1962, the ‘Addy’ built a brand spanking new state of the art purpose built premises on the site of the old building that had served the business for forty years.

Richard’s memories of the fire

One of our longest serving volunteers, Richard, was working for the Bendigo Advertiser at the time of the fire in 1962. His job was to collect the papers after they had been printed and deliver them in the Bendigo Advertiser vans to the various newsagents.

On the night of the fire Richard said ‘I was awakened in my bed by a bloke tapping at the window at home. He said, “You’ve got to go to work, it’s been burnt down!”

By the time Richard got to his workplace in Pall Mall, the fire was out but it was a scene of devastation. All the machinery had fallen through the floors into the basement where the rolls of newsprint were stored. As reported in the supplement, “The Bendigo Advertiser has lost its home. The headquarters from which it has published a daily newspaper for almost 40 years has been destroyed by fire, together with all its tools and machinery of publication. But although its home is now a quagmire of sodden charcoal, a tangle of twisted metal, this newspaper is still alive.”

Richard said the Bendigo Advertiser prided itself on having never missed a day of publication since its inception in the 1850s. “They printed the ‘Addy. at the Riverina Herald in Echuca for a week after the fire, before the Herald office took us to Melbourne. All the staff had to move to Melbourne for some time and we had to travel to Melbourne at night to bring the paper back to Bendigo to be distributed.”

Our collection and our volunteers

This wonderful supplement, with its colour photos of Bendigo in 1963, is just one of more than 3000 records regarding the Bendigo Advertiser that our BHS volunteers have catalogued to date on the Victorian Collections website. These records are very easy to find using the ‘Bendigo Advertiser’ in the search function. Then, it you are interested in having a closer look at an article or object in question, it is possible with the identifying number to find the original and look at it in person.