‘People remember him in the shop’: Stewart Macdonald dies aged 94
Stewart Macdonald spent his life putting ink to paper, so it’s only fitting the North Queensland businessman gets his own newspaper obituary. Read how WWI played a part in Stewart’s career path.
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Stewart Macdonald spent his life putting ink to paper, so it’s only fitting the Charters Towers businessman gets his own newspaper obituary.
Stewart – born George Stewart Macdonald – went by his middle name his entire life, and was well-known across Charters Towers and the northwest as the man behind the counter at Macdonald Printers.
In fact, Stewart has been sitting behind a linotype since the age of 15, using hot metal to create ‘slugs’ or lines of text, following his father into the skilled world of printing.
Stewart’s son, Malcolm Macdonald, said the family received a huge amount of condolences upon his father’s death – and most was from former customers.
“People remember him in the shop. As well as printing he also sold stationary and lots of businesses came to him, people got their wedding invitations from him, books, and letterheads,” Malcolm said.
“For the entire time grandad and dad ran the business, they never, ever advertised it. It was all word of mouth … Dad was working well into his 80s when he finally closed the business, and all his stuff is still there (on Bow St). I’m slowly trying to give stuff away.”
Linotypes were invented in the 1880s and were used right up to the 1980s, and were a godsend to Australian newspapers during the depression.
Old samples of intricate designs created by Stewart remain on record in the Macdonald Printing store, and the family plan to send a lot of his work to James Cook University for archiving.
“He was really good on the linotype, and he was also a hand and machine compositor,” Malcolm said of his father.
“He was born in Townsville, and his father worked for the Townsville Bulletin and his uncle too.”
When the uncle, Peter Macdonald, enlisted in WWI, Stewart’s father took over his brother’s position as a hand and machine compositor on the Townsville Bulletin printing floor.
Eventually, Donald John ‘Jack’ Macdonald took his skills from the press site and moved his young family 130km west to Charters Towers, buying into a printing business and moving into the old The Evening Telegraph office.
Malcolm said his father loved Charters Towers and his job.
“I don’t think he would’ve moved anywhere else in the world,” he said.
“He went to Richmond Hill State School and Charter Towers State High School and joined granddad in the shop in 1945, when he was 15 years old.”
Just like the molten lead he cast into keys, and the ink he laid down on paper, Stewart’s life was firmly set in the family business and the Bow St shop, but his free time was kept busy with a range of surprising interests.
During WWII’s Stewart’s father joined the army and spent time away in the Northern Territory, so his mother, Rita, signed him up for Scouts hoping it would be a good influence.
Stewart went on to become a District Commissioner of the Charters Towers District and attended many Scout Jamborees over the years – in the 60s Stewart raised money to attend his first ever Jamboree by becoming a pamphlet and product sample delivery man on his sister’s old pushbike.
There was Scouts, gardening, chicken breeding and showing, the Excelsior brass band (to the mirth of his children, who said he didn’t have a musical bone in his body), the Presbyterian Church’s Sunday school, collecting bits and pieces, and of course, his love for hand operated printing machines.
Stewart’s daughter Ruth said her father was always involved in something.
“Over the years, we, his children and his grandchildren have been involved with Dad’s various interests to some degree – like it or not,” Ruth said.
Malcolm said there were always chickens at his father’s house.
“He was involved in the Charters Towers Poultry Club, and there were certain people in Townsville he would trade chickens with,” he said.
Stewart died on April 6, 2025 aged 94.
“It was expected, his health hadn’t been good,” Malcolm said.
“He was living at home until the last four weeks.”
Ruth said her father “seemed to lose his spark” after the death of his sister Flora in 2022, who’d worked alongside him in the shop, and his other sister Margaret in 2024.
Stewart was buried at the Harry Birgan Lawn Cemetery.
He is survived by his wife Hazel, four children, and five grandchildren.
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Originally published as ‘People remember him in the shop’: Stewart Macdonald dies aged 94
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