When you decide to repaint the interior of the house – with all the unpacking and packing of things and fraught decisions about what to keep and what not to keep – there are often some strange surprises.

In the midst of clearing a cupboard containing old cricket bats and tennis racquets– none of which used in some decades – there was a copy of 20 January 1990 edition of The Age. It hadn’t been saved for any newsworthy reason – simply as wrapping paper.

For a start it was in broadsheet format more than twice its current size. As the edition was a Saturday one it was smaller than when it was actually delivered as all the classified pages (The Age’s rivers of gold) were absent.

The front page lead was an article about the ongoing Melbourne tram strike with the headline Trams Row: Now the crunch. Alongside this was an article headlined For Cain things are going terribly wrong. The issue at stake – the introduction of driver only trams. The opposition – led by the tramways trade union and a Federal MP, Gerry Hand, argued (among other things) that without conductors pedestrians getting on and of trams would be hit by cars.

The story spilled on to inside pages under the headline For the Government, things are going terribly, terribly wrong.

Transport Minister, Jim Kennan, was at the centre of the controversy and was becoming one of the most hated people in Melbourne – particularly among retailers. Fast forward some 35 years and the debate is no longer about conductors and was now about whether Melbourne would get one or other of an outrageously overpriced ticket machine contract.

When it comes to ticketing systems there is a wry anecdote about suppliers and clients. The supplier offers an off the shelf system – like that used in London, Singapore, Sydney and other cities and the clients respond by saying their system is unique because of its multi-modal nature. When probed about what this multi-modal problem is the client responds breathlessly – “We have trams, trains and buses.”

Victoria has long been a leader in such idiotic project commissioning – along with many other governments although being worse than the UK is saying something.

Also on the front page: Military forces deployed to protect Australians on Bougainville; the wounding of The Age correspondent Mark Baker; and, the aggressive confrontation at the Adelaide Oval between Merv Hughes and Wasim Akram.

Inside the paper was a story about the immediate peril facing the State Library – fortunately long fixed although more money for all Victoria’s cultural institutions is still urgently needed. There was also a piece on the Federal election by Michelle Grattan which, with a few edits, would serve for one of her contemporary columns in The Conversation.

Heroin trafficking was also in the news along with the AMA’s campaign for a smoking ban. On the editorial and features page the leader asked So what now, Mr Premier? and Robert Haupt asked Can Labor survive the kiss of debt? Deja Vue all over again. The forest wars were also featured and the inimitable Tanner had a rueful piece on his hospital visits. Alan Bond was featured back in the paper over the Bond Brewing receivership.

One policy idea which emerged was proposed by Opposition Leader, Andrew Peacock. He suggested to subsidising private health insurance. He didn’t win but the policy later did – along with all the other forms of middle class ‘welfare’ from negative gearing to treatment of dividends which cost billions in every year.

In the pages advertising executive positions a Sales Manager was offered $50k plus incentives while head hunter Russell Reynolds was also advertising for applications for Qantas jobs: two Deputy Chief Executive Officers, Chief Financial Officer, General Managers of human resources, IT and Tours marketing. The Qantas executive gravy train was underway – along with the steady decline in service which has transformed Qantas from one of Australia’s most loved brands to one of its most hated.

The Age, 35 years on, has shrunk to tabloid size and influence. The rivers of gold have gone with the advent of online advertising. Retrenchments are now common and only ageing print media consumers like the blog still get it delivered. The few ageing readers probably get through the front of the paper in about 10 minutes while lingering rather longer on the sports pages.

Indeed, if Ross Gittins, Greg Baum and Tony Wright stopped writing for The Age there would probably be no point in getting it delivered let alone walking to the corner shop to pick it up  when the distribution system experienced one of its frequent failures.