In this age of paywalls, it’s hard to access an obituary of media powerhouse Mike Hambidge, who died on Saturday (October 26) aged 89. So here’s a personal reminiscence.
With his wife Dorothy, he was notably, the owner – and for much of his life – editor of the Murray Valley Standard, noted also for its pioneering Bridge Printing Office.
He had attracted my attention back in 1977, when my then fiancée brought with her to the UK, a copy of industry journal the PANPA Bulletin including an article Hambidge had penned about his “multi-media madhouse”.
We married later that year – soon after our own Goss Community had been installed – and while visiting family four years later, had the opportunity to find out more on an excursion into South Australia in my father-in-law’s tired ute.
Discounting the pauses to allow an overheated engine to cool, Murray Bridge was our first stop, and Mike Hambidge – notwithstanding a driving conviction that restricted him to business use – insisted on showing us the town.
With his trailer yacht (which needed attention to its mast) hitched up behind, we made our way around the historic river town, where a new attraction was a model “bunyip” which roared when disturbed, created by Hambidge with fellow service association members. It seems ironic that I learned of Mike’s death while researching the change of ownership of another of the same name, the Gawler weekly The Bunyip, which has been sold to SA Today Group.
Mike introduced me to Messenger Newspapers heir Roger Baynes – whose late father (also Roger) had built the Adelaide suburban newspapers group, and was the state’s biggest heatset printer – and to Formgraphics, an advanced typesetting bureau into which Hambidge was to buy shares.
News Corp, incidentally, shut the print editions as part of its widespread closures post-COVID.
There began a close friendship within the industry, and I recall one PANPA conference, at the time when PC and especially Mac-based page assembly was “a thing”, viewing a demonstration with him in which the tech in question was protected (during a thunderstorm) by an umbrella. The PANPA exhibition that year, was in a marquee in the grounds of the Gold Coast hotel, as always (it seemed) a casino.
Mike and Dorothy Hambidge had sold a share of their business to Messenger – in the same way that Baynes senior had taken Advertiser Newspapers as a partner, but unlike Baynes – forced to sell outright on his father’s death – the Hambidges got to “buy back the farm”.
Only to sell a share (and then the whole business) to Rural Press in 1986.
Mike’s four-unit Community – so similar to the one I had signed for at US$154,000 at the start of 1977 – was later developed to a much bigger, all colour press, under Bob Lockley’s direction of the group, later “merged” into Fairfax Media, sold to Nine and then on to Australian Community Media.
Starting with Stock Journal (the reason for the initial deal), Bridge Printing developed into a substantial printing operation, producing SA editions of national mastheads including Fairfax’s Australian Financial Review.
Retired from the editorship, and at Formgrapics, he became a consultant to other publishers moving to desktop typesetting, and newspaper historian Rod Kirkpatrick noted in a 2005 Bulletin article moves to Launceston and then Mildura.
His funeral took place on Monday (October 28). Mike will be remembered and missed by many in the newspaper industry, especially from those 'madhouse' days!
GXpress would welcome more details of his later life, in order to publish a fuller obituary.
Peter Coleman
Pictured: The Murray Bridge bunyip on YouTube (GXpress understands there may be a digital stand-in while the original is being serviced)