One of Australia’s longest-running stationery businesses has changed hands after 115 years.

 

Bishops Office Choice at Goondiwindi (on the Queensland/NSW border), owned by the Bishop family since 1911, was sold last month, ending a fourth-generation connection with the business.

 

“My great-grandfather started the business, and it was then handed onto my grandfather, then my father,” Murray Bishop told Office Products News.

 

No longer a member of Office Choice, the business is now known as Nextra Goondiwindi.

 

While the stationery and office supplies business is well-known around the Goondiwindi district (population 6500), the Bishop family has another famous connection with the town through Bill Bishop’s part-ownership of the famous racehorse Gunsynd, the ‘Goondiwindi Grey’.

 

Gunsynd was named the VRC Horse of the Year in 1972 and inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame. In 1973 Tex Morton recorded a song The Goondiwindi Grey (The Gunsynd Song). 

 

More than 25,000 people farewelled Gunsynd at Doomben Racecourse in 1973 where he participated in an exhibition gallop. 

 

A statue of Gunsynd was erected in Goondiwindi after the horse’s retirement and the Bishop family established a museum to celebrate the grey’s 29 victories.