Keith Dunstan and Geoff Hook celebrity print 1972

Summary

This concrete handprint was formerly located as a part of the iconic McEwans celebrity pavement. Between 1972 and 1994, scores of celebrities had their handprints and footprints immortalised in cement at the entrance to the McEwans hardware store on Bourke Street. The City of Melbourne Art and Heritage Collection acquired a number of these impressed concrete slabs from the original celebrity pavement in 2005.

"For 20 years (1958-78), journalist Keith Dunstan (1925-2013) wrote a daily observational column, ‘A Place in the Sun’, for the Sun News-Pictorial, the morning stablemate of the afternoon Herald newspaper. He also authored many popular history books, including Wowsers (1968), Knockers (1972) and The Paddock That Grew (1962), a history of the MCG. Dunstan founded the Anti-Football League in 1967. The daily cartoon by Geoff Hook (1928-2018) was a feature of the Sun, and later the Herald-Sun, for nearly 30 years, from 1964. Every Hook cartoon featured his trademark – a fish hook, hidden for readers to find. Hook went by Geoff, but signed his cartoons ‘Jeff’. The pair left their prints in the Celebrity Walk to mark the 50th birthday of the Sun News-Pictorial." - Robyn Annear, 2023