It's where stars such as Hugh Jackman, Essie Davis and David Wenham​ found fame, and where nationally treasured shows such as Countdown, SeaChange and Adventure Island were made.

It's where the then-Premier Joan Kirner, dressed in leather, sang I Love Rock and Roll on The Late Show in 1993, and where TV current affairs satire Frontline was taped.

On June 30, the first public tour of the Gordon Street complex, site of Victoria's first ABC TV broadcast in 1956, will be held as part of the Glen Eira Storytelling Festival.

But it could also be the last tour. The ABC confirmed that the centre is earmarked to be closed within a year and later sold.

TV production will be moved to new studios being built behind the ABC's Southbank studios.

Parts of Gordon Street are like time capsules, including 1960s helmet-style hair dryers in the make-up room, and props rooms crammed with stuff, including fake wedding cakes, hessian bags of fake manure and a (fake) wombat gored by a panther used in an episode of Bed of Roses.

Visitors will walk through hangar-like Studio 31, where Countdown was made in the 1970s and '80s, and where Shaun Micallef's current comedy show Mad As Hell is produced.

A much smaller studio 33 – the size of a schoolroom with original teak walls – was from 1956 to 2000 the set for the ABC news bulletins.

The first-floor wardrobe department is worth its own tour. Its adage is that "if we don't have it, we can make it". Here you will find a wolf costume, tutus, a row of vintage sewing machines and hats from every era.

A dazzling purple showgirl outfit made for a dancer in the early 1980s variety show The Saturday Show was recently worn again by actor Essie​ Davis, as 1920s private detective Phryne​ Fisher, in a circus episode of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries.

One of the building's oldest sections is timber-panelled studio 32, where interiors for pioneering soap opera Bellbird, prison drama Corelli  (where Hugh Jackman and wife Deborra-Lee Furness met) and comedy Kath and Kim were shot.

The tour guide, veteran set buyer-dresser Andrew Best, says when he came to Gordon Street in 1983, after two years in dispatch at the ABC city radio studios, it was bustling and glamorous. "It seemed like Christmas permanently because there were twinkling lights everywhere and sequins, and stars."

Constructing sets on Countdown, Best got a front row view of groups including Culture Club and The Village People. He remembers Cyndi Lauper asking for "more trash cans" for her backdrop to mime to her hit Girls Just Want to Have Fun.

On drama series such as Corelli, Mercury and Something in the Air, Best has worked with many stars, including Hugh Jackman, Geoffrey Rush, Sullivan Stapleton and Eric Bana, who became Hollywood actors. He's the one who handed them their fake beer in a scene, or made sure that a courtroom looked authentic.

He said for the public, the tour is "possibly their only and last opportunity to come and experience the headquarters of a major television network, with a lustrous 60 years' history going from the Olympics, for which television in the country was founded".

"We've created some incredibly iconic shows here and I'm really excited to have been part of that."