Mr Byrne first got into the newsagency game in 1987 running the store in Tatton with brothers Tom and Bill.

At the height of their ventures they had three stores between them, and now with the sale of Southcity that era has come to an end.

"I've been doing it for 34 years and that's more than enough, I'm 64 years old," Mr Byrne said. "The opportunity arose, we got an offer and decided it was a good time to take it."

The store will be taken over by a Sydney-based owner and the current staff retained in a sale settled this week and brokered by Country Business Brokers' Neville Harvey.

Mr Harvey said the sale signalled the end of an era but was a good reflection of the increasingly strong commercial market in the city. In his time behind the counter, Mr Byrne has watched everything from global calamity to local happenings play out both in store and in headlines, with one morning in particular sticking in his memory.

"I remember coming into work one morning, and we were doing home delivery of the papers in those days, and I opened up the bundle to take the papers out and there was a big headline announcing the world was at war," he said. "It was the morning after 9/11, and I remember thinking 'far out look at that'."

Of all the wares he ever sold, he said it was enormous rolls of toilet paper in 2020 that he never expected to have in stock, let alone to sell out in the blink of an eye.

"We sold the big industrial ones, the great big things," he said. "People were that desperate to get their hands on things at that stage."

He said though he wouldn't miss the alarm at 5am, it was always worth it.

"It's hard getting out of bed at 5am every morning in the middle of winter but once you get here it's great, you meet so many good people," he said. "In the mornings, people on their way to work, you have a chat, you know everyone by name.

"I've had people say already they're going to miss our early morning catch-ups. People have been very loyal over the years."

As for what's next, his only firm plan is a well-earned break.

"We'll have a good break, a good holiday, that's all at this stage," he said.

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