Farrago, the student voice of a university, turns 100

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In 2025, editions of the University of Melbourne’s student newspaper Farrago are sent to the printers using a few keystrokes.

But the 1989 editors had to hand-deliver their pages to the presses.

Three of the 1989 Farrago editors, Prue Walker, Matt Healy and Kath Fethers

To finish each issue, every 10 to 14 days they would work all-nighters, recalls one of the editors, Prue Walker.

On deadline night, one or two of them would leave Farrago’s Parkville office at 4am and head to McPherson Printing in Shepparton, where they had a 6am printing slot.

Walker says she would ask friends to drive because she was too tired to take the wheel. During the four-hour print run, Walker would duck out for breakfast. “I remember falling asleep on the footpath,” she says.

It was not always glamorous, but the job held a certain excitement, on which they look back fondly.

Prue Walker, Kath Fethers, Matt Healy and Megan Nicholson in North Fitzroy in 1988 while campaigning to be Farrago editors.

Walker and her fellow 1989 editors Matt Healy, Kath Fethers and Megan Nicholson are among a select list who have edited Farrago, which this year is 100 years old. Today the publication is a magazine and is widely read online as well as in print.

Famous past Farrago editors include historian Geoffrey Blainey, novelist Christos Tsiolkas and gangland lawyer turned police informant Nicola Gobbo.

The 1989 editors had no mobile phones and no internet. The biggest drama they faced was a barney with a social club, which caused their last edition to be cancelled.

The Farrago office in 1989 before today’s computerised production.

The incident came after a fictional contributor submitted a prank letter that Walker says “wouldn’t be acceptable today”.

Walker says the letters section at the time was “freewheeling, provocative and irreverent”, but the club threatened to sue and complained to the student union. The union defunded the final 1989 issue.

However, partly through a Dinosaur Jr band night, the Farrago editors raised the money to produce the final issue themselves. “It was the party of the year,” says Fethers. “We turned a negative into a positive.”

Healy says editing Farrago, overall, was “a real highlight of my time at university”.

Copy image of a farewell, satirical last page published in 1989.

Walker says they explored issues affecting students and exposed injustice, such as questioning why a group that condemned homosexuality received student union funding.

Another story covered police arrests of students who were protesting against the introduction of student union fees.

Fethers laments that while technology has changed, issues such as violence against women and Indigenous reconciliation remain “sadly unresolved”.

Lighter jobs included interviewing West Indies cricketer Viv Richards.

Healy’s interview with artist Howard Arkley was going well, until Healy realised his three-hour tape recording hadn’t worked.

Healy says that in its 100 years, Farrago has “given voice to students” and provided an alternative to mainstream media reporting, “and I hope that continues”.

He says university administrators and academics are vocal but “the voices of students — of young people and of optimism, and possibility — are harder to find” and should be nurtured.

A Farrago Centenary Gala, hosted by the 2025 editors – Sophie He, Mathilda Stewart, Ibrahim Muan Abdulla and Marcie Di Bartolomeo – will be held at Trades Hall on Thursday night. An exhibition, Farrago 100, will run at George Paton Gallery, Melbourne University’s Building 159, from September 18 to October 10.