It was the year the American Civil War began: Italy formed a united modern state; the Western Australian Supreme Court was established, Brisbane gained its first daily newspaper, enduring newspapers were established in Mount Gambier, Toowoomba and Rockhampton, and Orange’s first newspaper was published.

It was 1861, and so this year Mount Gambier’s ‘Border Watch’, Toowoomba’s ‘Chronicle’ and Rockhampton’s ‘Morning Bulletin’ celebrate 150 years of publication, Brisbane’s ‘Courier-Mail’ celebrates 150 years as a daily, and Orange celebrates 150 years of newspaper publication.

In 1861, newspaper development in the Australian colonies was starting to gain serious momentum, but to a lesser extent in Queensland, which had enjoyed colonial status for little more than 12 months, and in Western Australia. Capital-city dailies were being published in 1861 in Sydney (two), Melbourne (three), Hobart (one), Adelaide (one) and, from May 14 that year, Brisbane (one).* Perth had to wait until 1882 to taste daily publication for the first time, although Fremantle sampled it in 1870-71.

My table shows when the first capital-city and country newspapers were published within the boundaries of the colonies that gradually took shape – as separation from New South Wales occurred in the cases of Tasmania (1825), Victoria (1851), and Queensland (1859).

Country-newspaper development varied widely from colony to colony. Victoria was streets ahead of the other colonies in 1861 because of the gold rushes to Ballarat, Bendigo, Castlemaine and other areas of that colony. By January 1861, 12 country newspapers had been published daily in Victoria, one in NSW, and none in the other colonies.

The first country paper in Australia was published at Launceston in 1825 by George Terry Howe, the 18-year-old son of George Howe, Australia’s first newspaper publisher. The paper, the Tasmanian, lasted only six months.

Six other newspapers were launched at Launceston in the ten years from 1829 before any provincial titles were launched in the other colonies. The‘Port Lincoln Times’ was printed in Adelaide in April 1839 and appeared seven times over the next two years (sometimes being printed in Port Lincoln), but South Australia did not obtain another English-language country paper until 1860 when the copper mining at Kapunda led to the launch of the ‘Northern Star’. It survived only two years, but far away to the south-east at Mount Gambier, some border hoppers from Portland, Victoria, launched a paper.

The Laurie family – a widow, Janet and two sons, Andrew Frederick, 17, and James Park Dawson, 15 – launched the weekly ‘Border Watch’ on April 26, 1861. The paper has fought off competition over the years, some of it solid and enduring, and has infrequently increased publication frequency – to biweekly on May 9, 1866, triweekly on May 25, 1926, and to four times a week from November 2, 1981.

What kept the paper together in the years of struggle was the solid working relationship between two Scottish families: the Lauries and the Watsons. John Watson, a schoolteacher, joined the paper in 1863 and edited it for just short of 63 years. Watson was friendly with the poet Adam Lindsay Gordon and published his first Australian poem, ‘The Feud’, in 1864.

The Laurie interest in the paper ceased in 1958 and the Watson interest in 1977 when South-East Telecasters acquired it.



At Toowoomba, at the top of the Great Dividing Range west of Brisbane, two families have also been crucial to the success and survival of the 150-year-old ‘Chronicle’. If the city is “one the great urban bourgeois success stories of Queensland”, as one historian suggests, then the Toowoomba ‘Chronicle’ is one of the great success stories of the Queensland press.

The ‘Chronicle’ faced competition from an established newspapers at its very birth, on July 4, 1861, survived all sorts of economic hardships in the 19th century to become a daily newspaper in 1906, took the upper hand in a merger with its rival of 61 years in 1922, faced new competition from a bold venture into daily journalism in 1955, and again took the upper hand in a merger in 1970.

Central to its survival and success were two families: The Grooms, who owned the paper 1876-1922, and the Dunns, who owned it 1922-68 and were major shareholders in Provincial Newspapers (Qld), the owners from 1968-88.

The Dunns also played a major role in the success of the ‘Morning Bulletin’, Rockhampton, which joined the 150-year club on July 9 this year. They owned the paper from 1911-1968 and PNQ owned it until 1988. The Buzacott brothers, 1861-80, saw the paper through those early years of fierce competition with the ‘Northern Argus’ (established 1863) and made it Queensland’s first country daily in January 1873.

PNQ was formed on April 1, 1968, when six families whose ownership links with Queensland provincial newspapers went back as far as 1861 amalgamated their newspaper interests to help stave off predators such as the Murdochs and the Packers.

The families were the Dunns (owners of dailies in Toowoomba, Rockhampton and Maryborough and the biweekly ‘Nambour Chronicle’), the Mannings (owners of the Mackay daily), the Irwins (owners of the Warwick daily), and the Parkinsons, Stephensons and Kippens (owners of the Ipswich daily). The families already held a controlling interest in the Bundaberg ‘News-Mail’.

PNQ soon assumed full ownership of the Bundaberg paper, and at the close of 1974 bought the Gladstone daily. In July 1980 it launched the ‘Sunshine Coast Daily’, giving it nine dailies.

The very act of combining the six families’ interests eventually left them wide open to predators in 1988. And so APN News & Media now owns those nine dailies plus the ‘Gympie Times’ and the four NSW Northern Rivers dailies. From the end of this year there will be only four print centres for those 14 dailies: Ballina (NSW) and Yandina, Toowoomba and Rockhampton (Qld).



In Orange, NSW, 150 years of newspaper publication will be celebrated in December. Elisabeth (Liz) Edwards, a former ‘Central Western Daily’ journalist, is compiling a book to mark the occasion.

Bathurst had its first newspaper in 1848, but Orange, now 45 minutes’ drive to the west, had to wait until December 7, 1861, when Michael Francis Cahill launched the ‘Western Examiner’. It had competition from the ‘Orange Guardian’ from the beginning of 1864. Cahill struck financial difficulties in 1865 and closed the ‘Examiner’ in late August. Six weeks later it resumed publication, but it ceased finally in 1878.

The ‘Western Advocate’ (established 1874) and the ‘Orange Leader’ (1890) became dailies early in the 20th century – the ‘Leader’ on September 2, 1901, and the ‘Advocate’ on May 9, 1904. During World War I, they agreed to discontinue daily issue and did so on July 31, 1915.

They appeared triweekly, on alternate days – effectively giving Orange a daily – until the two titles were merged by Hubert Browett Whitham’s growing chain, Western Newspapers, as the ‘Central Western Daily’ on October 1, 1945. Today the paper is owned by Fairfax Media.

The book that Liz Edwards is producing will feature some of the reportage of Joe Glasson, who reported for Orange newspapers from 1904-1954. The Glasson reportage will include some of the articles he wrote between 1945 and 1954 about the Orange he remembered during his younger years.



* I wrote about this in the ‘Courier-Mail’ on May 14 this year.