A visit to the Northern Territory News rounded out the first day of the SWUG Australia conference in Darwin.

The News Corp Australia print site has a two-year-old KBA Comet press and mailroom including the first Ferag Easysert newspaper system installed in the country.

And after a tour of the site – in which unusually, the newsroom is located immediately alongside press and mailroom – there was crocodile sausages and buffalo burgers with Kakadu plum dressing for guests.

About 140 Single Width Users Group members have been getting into the spirit of the NT capital since arriving yesterday: First there was a welcome party at the Crocosaurus Cove tourist attraction, after which many delegates apparently had difficulty negotiating the attractions of Mitchell Street on the way back to their hotels.

NT News editor Rachel Hancock (on our homepage) helped delegates get into the mindset of the city where “anything goes” this morning with a rundown on “that paper with the funny headlines” and its world-famous front pages.

She has: After moving from staid South Australia and its Murray Valley Standard (Murray Bridge) and the Adelaide Advertiser she’s joining in the fun with the journalistic team behind headlines which frequently go viral. “I have a few sleepless nights at times,” she says.

Especially when the NT paper differentiated its coverage of the Packer/Gyngell brawl from its southern counterparts with ‘Why I’ve got a Packer up my clacker’.

The conference has included a mix of motivational speakers with technical and safety presentations. Among them Ballarat engineer Steve Thomas related the “foolish moment” when he trapped his hand in an inserting machine… in a manner evocative of Gerard Hoffnung’s Bricklayer’s Story. For his part, Thomas ended up requiring emergency surgery, months off work, and was given a formal warning by Fairfax Media printing and distribution chief executive (and SWUG president) Bob Lockley… and told he must tell SWUG colleagues all about it.

Inspiration came from boxing champion Danny Green and retired Army officer Kurt Brissett, son of Glenn Brisssett of the Sydney printing roller family.

Ideas came from Murray Bridge site manager Trevor Channon and James Acland of DS Chemport, while James Haisman (Screen Australia) and Peter Kirwan (Goss International) discussed the relative merits of their companies’ approaches to short-run newspaper printing.

And hope for the future, from fast-talking 2013 SWUG apprentice of the year Nicole Clarke, who fronted up with orange hair and nose-ring to take members through her experiences on last year’s tour of print sites in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.

• More SWUG reports to follow online and in our upcoming print edition.