Keen sports supporters, within a year the brothers had started up their own newspaper, The Sporting World. Bringing information about local and international sport and racing together in a local tabloid proved a success, and the paper survived for 46 years.

The business lasted somewhat longer. Four generations of the Berrys worked in the purpose-built Dana Street printing factory, and the Berry, Anderson and Co. business stayed in family hands until 2017.

Now the landmark building will be offered for sale for the first time since its construction in 1902. Henry Berry, the great-grandson of Andrew Burgess Berry, admits putting the magnificent building on the market was a painful decision.

"I was pondering this for some time," Mr Berry says.

"I toyed with the idea of keeping it, but in the end I thought it would be better if someone else did it. It was very hard to come to the decision to sell."

Henry's reluctance is understandable. His extended family, in their generations, have spilled sweat, tears, ink and literally blood into the thick floorboards. One of the family, James Berry, had a hand 'severely crushed' in a machine in 1909.

It's been a Ballarat institution and a Berry family business since Andrew Burgess Berry bought out his brother and John Anderson in 1905. Anderson moved to Melbourne to begin another successful printing business, while Andrew began to expand locally.

The Dana Street building was lifted a storey and reinforced with massive steel joists in 1912, while Andrew was overseas sourcing paper bag-making machines. Those machines are still in the building, a rare existing example of early 20^th Century paper technology.

In fact, Henry Berry says, a relatively recent inspection from WorkSafe culminated in the officer being taken upstairs. Staring wide-eyed at the Heath Robinson-like collection of gears, knives and exposed moving parts, he refused to believe the machine was not still in use.

"He could not be convinced," Mr Berry says, despite the decades of dust and grease coating the metal frames.

The factory relied on belt-drive throughout, and even with majority of machinery removed, pulleys and engines remain. Dana Street was originally dedicated to bag making, while printing was conducted in a long-demolished building next-door to Craig's Royal Hotel in Lydiard Street.

Henry Berry has a remarkable recall of the history of the company. He began working for the firm in 1973, and took over in the 1990s, continuing a long and unbroken line of Berry owners - Andrew, Henry, Andrew, and Henry. In its day, Berry, Anderson had premises along Sturt Street, having acquired the Summerscales stationery and bookselling business next to the Post Office in 1920, and another across the road.

Under his stewardship, Henry Berry saw printing and bagmaking expand to the supply of other paper products such as cup and wrapping, and a shift from letterpress to lithographic offset and latterly digital printing.

Now the presses have fallen silent, a new life awaits this astonishing building.

What will become of this untouched piece of Ballarat's history? Colliers International's Charles Kennedy, who is handling the sale, says there has been remarkable, substantial interest in the factory.

Despite being in a heritage precinct, which triggers controls over changes to exterior, the unchanged interior has no heritage safeguards, meaning a new owner could feasibly gut the 120-year-old fabric.

That would be unlikely, says Mr Kennedy.

"Every inspection has been talking about the character of the building," he says.

"I would be very surprised if someone developing this didn't highlight the historic features."

Mr Kennedy has put an estimated sale value on the property of $1.1 to $1.5 million at auction.

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