Local Media: Celebrating 150 Years of Local Press traditions

Melbourne’s widest coverage of local newspapers

he Local Paper is produced in localised editions across 40 local areas in Melbourne, Mornington Peninsula and regional areas:

Whittlesea - Regional

Whittlesea - Urban

Yarra Ranges

The Melbourne Observer is inserted into all editions of The Local Paper. All newspapers are available online, and also in print.

Front Cover Photo: ‘Newspaper boy, Melbourne’ Photographer: Mark Strizic 1928-2012

Thanks to State Library of Victoria

Heritage of local papers extends back to 1866

In 2023, Local Media Pty Ltd celebrates the 150-year anniversary of one of its newspaper ancestors.

Local Media’s stable of titles offer the widest coverage of Melbourne’s suburbs by any local newspaper group.

The Evelyn Observer was established on October 31, 1873, later re-badging itself as the Eltham & Whittlesea Shires Advertiser.

In 1995, Local Media Publisher Ash Long re-established the Advertiser title with local editions in Broadford, Diamond Valley, Heidelberg-Ivanhoe, Kilmore, Peninsula-Western Port, Preston-Reservoir, Seymour, Whittlesea, the Yarra Ranges, and Yea.

The best traditions of some of the finest Victorian publishers over the past 150 years have been incoporated into today’s editions of The Local Paper and the Melbourne Observer.

In 2023, all of these areas across Melbourne are served by local editions of The Local Paper. In fact, every Melbourne suburb, the Mornington Peninsula and a number of peri-urban areas are covered by print and online editions of The Local Paper. No other community newspaper publisher offers this coverage.

Over his 54-year media career, Ash Long has had extensive hands-on local newspaper experience in all these areas.

Long’s career extends back to 1969, where he was employed as a 12-year-old newsboy by Gordon Barton’s Melbourne Sunday Observer.

His career has seen him work in all areas of newspapers including distribution, production and printing, editorial, advertising and management.

As well as newspaper experience, he and his companies have also worked in radio, television and the internet.

Part of Long’s experience was working in 1982-83 as Editor of the Bacchus Marsh Express which was built by early Victorian newspaperman, Christopher Crisp.

The Express was first published by George Lane from July 1, 1866, with

Christopher Crisp taking over from October 1866. Crisp married partner Lane’s daughter, Grace, in 1873. His sons and grandson succeeded him after his death in 1915, at age 71.

Ash Long was Editor of the Bacchus Marsh Express and Melton Express in 1982-83, whilst simultaneously working as Manager of Leader Newspapers, Melbourne.

Local Media Pty Ltd progenitor, Victorian Media Corporation Pty Ltd, trialled newspapers including Sunday Advertiser, Video News, News-Pix Weekender, Avoca Mail, and then commenced Croydon City News, Ringwood City News, Waverley City News, Valley Voice (Lilydale), and purchasing the 99-year-old Yea Chronicle newspaper in 1984.

Over the next 10 years until 1993, the Chronicle would expand with editions in Kinglake, Whittlesea, Mill Park, Yarra Glen, Nagambie, Broadford, Seymour and Kilmore. He sold the business in May 1993.

Long would take on six-month consultancies at the Upper Yarra Mail (Yarra Junction-Warburton), and The Canberra Weekly (112,000 copies weekly).

His return to Melbourne in 1995, saw the re-establishment of The Advertiser group with editions largely following the Chronicle group’s footprint.

In 1997, Long also commenced TV program production with Mansfield’s Melbourne, six nights a week on Optus Local Vision, and then Channel 31. Sister programs were established in Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide. Some programs were presented from Western Australia, Fiji and England.

Long appeared weekly on Bert Newton’s Good Morning Australia.

Other programs included Mansfield’s Memories and Night Owl Theatre.

Simultaneously, links were established with the Nightline radio program hosted by Bruce Mansfield and Philip Brady on 3AW. A Nightlines book, and monthly magazines were produced.

Ash Long

Decimus Mott

Long re-established the Melbourne Observer newspaper on September 14, 2002, the same date in 1969 when Gordon Barton had launched the Sunday Observer.

Local Media Pty Ltd had been incorporated in May 2001.

The newspaper had been produced both as the Sunday Observer and Melbourne Observer by each of Barton, Maxwell Newton and Peter Isaacson, with the last-named producing his final edition in 1989.

During the 1990s, Long had used the Observer name on sections within his Advertiser group.

The Melbourne Observer brand had a boost when a partnership was struck with Keith McGowan’s Overnighters radio program on 3AW.

The Observer became a sponsor of the program, with Long appearing on air each hour most days to promote the newspaper. McGowan retired from radio in 2011. McGowan died in December 2013 after suffering a stroke in his sleep, aged 70.

The Melbourne Observer had been a paid circulation newspaper through Victorian newsagencies for 20 years (2002-2022), but converted to free distribution within all editions of The Local Paper.

Digital editions of Local Media Pty Ltd’s newspapers have been availabl;e free on the Issuu platform since 2002.

The group had been one of the pioneers of Australian internet publishing with the establishment of trade publication, Media Flash (later Media Flash Daily) for six years from 1999.

The Local Media group expanded in March 2009 after the Black Saturday fires which claimed 173 lives.

The company produced the weekly Phoenix newspaper as a special purpose free weekly community newspaper, with free advertising available to local businesses, too them back on their feet after the disaster.

More than $1.3 million in free advertising was donated by Local Media Pty Ltd.

A news section, The Local Paper, was begun inside The Phoenix.

The Local Paper became its own freestanding masthead in February 2016, for the western section of Murrindindi Shire in areas including Kinglake, Flowerdale and Yea.

The Local Paper quickly expanded, with weekly editions often surpassing 100 pages. New editions were introduced for the Yarra Ranges and Mitchell Shires.

In April 2020, just after COVID-19 had hit, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation announced the closure of all the print editions of its Melbournewide Leader network.

Since that time, Local Media Pty Ltd

has introduced a network of free community newspapers, all under the Local Paper banner, covering all Melbourne and Mornington Peninsula municipalities, as well as peri-urban areas.

As the Victorian community continues its recovery from the pandemic, Local Media Pty Ltd is focused on consolidating the re-growth of its Local Paper stable of mastheads.

Within that growth will be the Melbourne Observer title of more than half-a-century’s good standing. It is a suitable time to reflect upon the company’s traditions and heritage.

First edition of The Phoenix in March 2009.

Local Media Pty Ltd: hands-on experience since 1969

Local Media Pty Ltd, current-day publisher of the Melbourne Observer and The Local Paper network, can trace its beginnings to the first days of the Sunday Observer and Nation Review newspapers.

The Sunday Observer newspaper was established in Melbourne by businessman Gordon Barton (IPEC) on September 14, 1969.

The Sunday Review (later The Review and then Nation Review) first hit the streets on October 11, 1970. Local Media Pty Ltd publisher Ash Long was there at the very beginning.

Long (aged 12 in 1969) started as a Sunday Observer newsboy in late September 1969, and his family took on a distribution agency in the northern suburbs in that first year.

The Sunday Observer distribution work continued under Barton’s proprietorship, lasting until that masthead’s closure in March 1971.

Later, the job involved picking up Sunday Review newspapers from the Fishermens Bend printery and delivering bundles to retail outlets and milk bars, first on a Saturday night-Sunday morning, then on a Friday night, and then on a Thursday night.

As a teenage schoolboy, Ash worked overnight as a ‘jockey’ as his father Jim drove the family Holden EJ station wagon and trailer to outlets around the suburbs. Ash’s brother, Greg, then a law student, had further distribution rounds, assisted by mother Marjory, covering the north-west and south-eastern suburbs, as well as the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University.

Later Review printeries included S&G Rotary Printery (also at Fishermens Bend), Stockland Press in North Melbour ne, Progress Press in Burwood and Moorabbin, and Waverley Offset Printers.

This was a complete unofficial apprenticeship for a curious and keen teenager, eager to learn every aspect of newspapers.

Ash Long worked on newspaper

Front cover of the Observer’s 50th anniversary souvenir in 2019. presses as a labourer, used his brain to plan distribution runs (logistics), and learn all aspects of offset pre-press (production).

The Longs also had an extra delivery round to Essendon Aerodrome to load newspaper bundles into the waiting Brain and Brown DC-3 aircraft bound for Tasmania, and then out to the newlyopened TAA freight centre at Tullamarine Airport to dispatch newspapers to every other state, and Papua-New Guinea.

With the overnight newspaper work done, Ash Long would go off to secondary school for a full day’s classroom learning.

Barton’s distribution company was known as Incorporated Newsagencies Company Pty Ltd, pitched against the official ‘Victorian Associated Newsagents Association’. As time progressed, Barton tried to expand the distribution network by adding other publications which included Harry Beitzel’s Footy Week , (free), Piotr

Olzewski’s Rats (45 cents per copy), Popular Motorcycling (20 cents per copy), Labor 73 (10 cents cover price), Lumiere, Cobber Comix (40 cents), Rolling Stone (60 cents) and The Digger (30 cents).

In 1971, Harry Beitzel’s Footy Week was distributed to outlets (including Caltex service stations) on a Sunday morning.

This was an era when all six Victorian Football League matches were played on Melbourne suburban grounds on Saturday afternoons.

On August 1, the paper converted to Sunday Sport (10 cents per copy), which also covered racing and other sports.

Beitzel’s right-hand man, Ray Young, wrote: “it is Harry Beitzel’s wish that all supervisors emply at least six to eight boys for sales of major intersections in their area.”

Within less than half-a-dozen weeks, Sunday News had switched to VANA sub-agents only, adopting a lower 10cent cover price.

On September 24, 1971, a memo exposed friction between INC and Harry Beitzel: “Some distributors have decided not to proceed in the distribution of the [Sunday News] publication for Mr Beitzel.

“We have been approached today to see whether we would agree to those agents not proceeding with Beitzel to take his man around their area to ensure that all outlets are covered. This request was denied.

“The situation as The Review sees it is simply this: a lot of your time and the Review’s money has been put into arranging the Review’s distribution system.

“Mr Beitzel has decided not to proceed with his arrangement with the Review and has subsequently engaged several Review distributors and other persons to handle Sunday News distribution – receiving the benefit of your time and our money at no cost to himself for the initial preparation work.

“The Review does not consider it should hand its distribution system for gratis to another publisher who has

rescinded his arrangement with us. For the third week in succession you are therefore requested not to make your list of Review outlets available to any other parties. Thanks fellas.”

Sunday News lasted just 26 weeks, with Beitzel amassing a loss of more than $200,000.

The Review consolidated by incorporating Nation magazine (1958-1972), previously published by Tom Fitzgerald and edited by George Munster.

The Digger circularised retailers that it was a youth-orented broadsheet, “managed by the team who built Go-Set to a peak 64,000 sales.

“It will report more than the world of rock music – special Digger correspondents will write on women’s liberation, trade union news, university politics, and sport,” noted Terrence Cleary, Circulation Manager.

In August 1971, The Review doubled its cover price overnight, issuing a tongue-in-cheek point-of-sale poster –‘One For The Price of Two’. It took a temporary sales hit, but the overall momentum for the year was up.

Melbourne distributors were required to phone the Review’s Jenny Harrison each week to advise quantities required.

A letter to distributors said: “The

Harry Beitzel’s death was announced in the Observer in 2017.

proprietors of our publishing company have been greatly concerned about our ability to absorb rising costs in producing the Review and have rightly questioned the future viability of our operation.

“With reluctance, we have been obliged to increase the retail price of the Review to 30 cents each, starting from the issue you collect tonight.

“We expect to lose sales as a result of this move, of course. We seek your earnest help in minimising this sales loss.”

The Sunday Observer had closed as a Barton production five months earlier in March 1971.

An August 20, 1971 memo noted: “The Barndana operation at Fisherman’s Bend has completely ceased and all the equipment, including the press, will be auctioned next Thursday.

“Tomorrow the Review moves to 113 Rosslyn St, West Melbourne. We will be in our own building – an indication of our confidence of the Review’s future.” The departure of distribution man, Mario Sartori, was noted.

Sometimes controversial Nation Review covers would cause unrest amongst retailers who needed coaxing to display the paper.

They were circularised: “At times you may have some reservations about displaying the Review because of its cover illustration or lead story. We have a highly developed understanding of our readers’ needs, so we ask that the Review stays on display, even if you fold it or form a fan with several copies to disguise it for more sensitive customers.”

Rolling Stone’s retail price was 60 cents, with 15 cents commission per sold copy for the distributors. It was published fortnightly.

Over a nine-week period, Greg Long noted that his Digger rounds issued an aggregate of 2031 copies, with 1064 returns, making 967 sales.

The lead-up to the 1972 Federal Election saw an optimism by the publishers: “As Nation Review gains in sales and advertising support, we have increased our print run and our number of pages printed.

“Coupling these facts with the

imminent price increase for newsprint, we are obliged to critically analyse the situation to find ways to control expenditure.”

Barry Watts noted that the interstate professional distributors had contained unsold copies to 12 per cent-18 per cent.

The conversion to a Thursday night print slot commenced in the preChristmas publishing period of 1972, just after Gough Whitlam’s election.

Nation Review Business Manager Barry Watts wrote to distributors: “We have been gratified with the consistent sales of the Review during the first portion of the holiday period, and

apportion a large portion of this to our Thursday evening print time. As a result, it hjas been decided to print on Thursday evenings for each issue in both January and February … in order to maximise sales – and to protect your own part-time income – it is important that you effect delivery of your Reviews in time for them to go on sale by 8am each Friday during the next two months.”

In August 1973, Barry Watts advised that accountant Andrew King would take responsibility for local and national distribution, whilst Watts went on to spend more time developiing the counterculture newspaper, The Living Daylights ,

An anti-Malcolm Fraser front-page. Nation Review, 1975.

to be edited by Richard Neville of Oz fame, and to be distributed through the VANA system, by David Syme & Co. Ltd (The Age).

In October, King, circularised the distribution contractors: “The alternative distribution arrangements made by The Digger and Rolling Stone have fallen through. We have agreed to distribute one more issue of each of these publications.”

By October 22, 1973, King wrote: “We wish to advise that this company has decided to close down its current distribution system. From the next issue of Nation Review, distribution of our publications in Victoria will be handled by authorised newsagents only.

“We wish to thank you for your efforts over the years in promoting the sales of publications distributed by this company.”

King noted: “The decision to go through the VANA system has been prompted by our belief that this system is economically more viable, and this, together with the other benefits that will accrue from the VANA system will facilitate the continued growth of our publications.”

Nation Review was a central part of Australian politics in the early 1970s, and Local Media pioneer Ash Long was there at the beginning.

The weekly Sunday Review newspaper was founded on Sunday, October 11, 1970, and the family of Ash Long (then aged 13) had a part-time newspaper distribution business for Gordon Barton’s Melbourne Sunday Observer

It would be fair to say that the Long family was a conservative one; Gordon Barton was a left-leaning Liberal, a maverick entrepreneur, with a quite unusual lifestyle for the times.

It was an odd combination. Perhaps the unconventional publishing style of the time set a template of fearless, independent reporting that would become the stamo pf Local Media’s newspapers, even half-a-century later.

They were different times. The Menzies-Holt-McMahon-Gorton

Liberal Government had been in power in Canberra for several decades. Labor’s Gough Whitlam was to take power two years later, in December 1972.

Long-time Review Publisher Richard Walsh, in his Ferretablia book (University of Queensland Press) reflected in 1993 that the early 1970s had State leaders including Robin Askin (NSW), Joh Bjelke-Peterson (Queensland), Sir Charles Court (Western Australia) and Sir Henry Bolte (Victoria).

Only Don Dunstan, South Australia’s flamboyant Premier, broke the mould.

“Harry Miller’s production of Hair had been running for more than a year

and Wendy Bacon’s Thorunka was sticking it up the Establishment. The London OZ team was soon to be jailed in grand style, in an upbeat re-run of the prosecution of the OZ boys in Sydney five years previously.

“There were Vietnam marches and moratoria, with Jim Cairns most publicly bearing the standard. There were raids on abortion clinics and the stench of police corruption in the three eastern States was so high even the pollies were finding it difficult to ignore it.”

Michael Cannon, who had briefly edited Gordon Barton’s Sunday Observer i n 1969, returned to become ‘Editor-in-Chief’ (there was no Editor)

Richard Walsh’s book on ‘The Ferret: Lean and Nosey’

of the Sunday Review . Some of the bylines in the first issue included Sol Encel, Geoffrey Sawer, Cyril Pearl (from Sydney’s Nation), a team from Pete Steedman’s Broadside , and cartoonist Michael Leunig.

There were syndication arrangements with the London Spectator and The New Statesman. Included in the team were Bill Green (Assistant Editor) and Richard Beckett (Chief Sub-Editor).

Michael Costigan, former Associate Editor of the Melbourne Roman Catholic weekly, The Advocate , wrote on religious affairs. Other early contributors were Barry Oakley and Niall Brennan.

Richard Walsh, Sydney medical faculty graduate, advertising whiz-kid, POL publisher, had advised Gordon Barton in the 1960s that if the businessman wanted to change public opinion that he should start a newspaper rather than a political party. Barton did both.

And in November 1970, Barton offered the Sunday Review’s editorship to Walsh (Cannon having vacated the chair after the fifth issue).

Barton offered one-third of Walsh’s advertising agency package to travel from Sydney to Melbourne each week. His first issue was on January 10, 1971.

Walsh remembered: “To house the Sunday Observer Gordon Barton had acquired a disused factory in Melbourne, in the industrial badlands on the banks of the Yarra at what was then best known as the Home of the Holden – Fishermans Bend.

“Never has there been such a misleadingly enticing suburban name –except perhaps for its neighbour, Garden City.

“When the Sunday Review was born, it was granted a small corner space in this already cramped set-up.

“The first home of the Sunday Review was thus a pale cream, partly fibro factory that squatted under a tin roof and baked all January in the summer heat. It was totally without windows or charm.

“The editorial and administration offices were a mean adjunct to the vast barn which housed the Blue Monster, a six-unit Goss. We worked in an atmo-

sphere spiced with the smell of machinery oil, printer’s ink and newsprint.

“Our offices at Lorimer Street, Fishermans Bend, were affectionately known as the Yellow Submarine because of the absence of windows and fresh air.

“Working there we had no sense of day or night; to make our lives almost tolerable Leunig had painted in watercolours a wonderfully bucolic sense of cows grazing in front of a picturesque little farmhouse, framed by checkered curtains and a neatly painted window sill, as though it was in fact a window through which we could gaze out upon an inspiring world of innocently rolling hills.

“This painting was tacked to the back wall in such a way that each of us could turn to it for blessed relief from the travails of composition.”

Walsh wrote of Mario Sartori, one of the printing crew: “Mario, an amiable and gregarious Italian-Australian, doubled as our distribution manager.

“There was a wonderful story that he was dumping the Sunday Observer’s

unsolds (of which there was a preternaturally large number) into the Yarra, across the road from our front door at the river bend where it flowed sluggishly. Beckett held the theory that one day, under riverbed pressure frrom the Observer’s returns, the Yarra would burst its banks and seize the Yellow Submarine in its watery maw.”

Columnist John Hepworth told the story of how the ‘Ferret’ mascot came about: “At the moment of destinby for us Leunig was bent over his desk contentiously drawing (for reasons best knownto himself) the likeness of a dog when Walsh, in relentless pursuit of ideas to promote our public image, passed by and glanced over his shoulder.

“Any fair-minded man would have recognised the thing Leunig was drawing was at least intended to be a dog, but Walsh has never been hampered by piddling considerations of this sort.

“By God!” he excalimed – a touch of awe, a certain reverence in his voice. “That’s it! That’s exactly what we want! The ferret!”

Nation Review columnist John Hepworth.

Our first edition: ‘Features, sport, but no scoop’

The first issue of the Sunday Observer (Sep. 14, 1969) was critiqued by The Canberra Times.

Newspaperman Rohan Rivett assembled the report. He was the elder son of Sir David Rivett, and his wife Stella (née Deakin).

He was a grandson of the former Prime Minister of Australia, Alfred Deakin, and of the Rev. Albert Rivett (1855-1934), a noted pacifist.

Rivett was qualified to write the review. He was Editor of the Adelaide newspaper, The News, from 1951 to 1960.

In 1960 he was sacked by Rupert Murdoch, who considered him unreliable and uncontrollable.

Rivett’s report was headlined Melbourne has Sunday paper: Features, sport – but no scoops’.

“Melbourne’s citizens were confronted with something new as they strolled last Sunday morning to the milk bar or “the deli” for their fresh Sabbath loaf,” Rivett wrote in the broadsheet.

“With minimum publicity – remember the big dailies had announced Sunday papers but produced nothing –Sydney’s ebullient Gordon Barton, Tjuringa Securities and IPEC chairman and Australia Party backer, was suddenly offering Melbourne its own Sunday tabloid.

“Sunday Observer was banned by the newsagents. But at 12c (15c air interstate) it promised attractive pickings to the Sunday shopkeepeers – at least 50 per cent more a copy than for the Sydney Sundays which many have been selling in recent years.

“A check along Whitehorse Road on Monday morning showed that one had done “very well”, the next hold sold 87 out of 100 delivered, the next “more than 60”. Apparently there was plenty of interest. What shook the shop-keepers –who keep open until 9 o’clock or later on Sundays – was that shortly after six an Observer truck had swooped down and gone off with all unsold copies as returns.

“The removal of the commodity with hours of good selling time remaining may be some shrewd new technique of creating a scarcity or hard-to-get demand. It certainly annoyed a number of vendors and their disappointed customers who heard of the availability of the new journal only from friends or neighbours on Sunday evening or even on Monday morning.

“Sunday Observer Mark I is a fairly conventional 64-page tabloid. It is incomparably more handsome than its short-lived predecessor, the Greek-run Post which seemed doomed from birth. It is vastly better printed and the proofreading of my edition was particularly good.

“Such gifted writers as Cyril Pearl, Don

Whitington, David Martin, Niall Brennan, Canberra’s Alan Fitzgerald and others contributed to the first issue and is an oddly modest corner of page five, Gordon Barton, as publisher, laid down a series of unexceptional ideas and objectives for his paper.

“Most of the stories were brief to the verge of scrapiness. However, there was a good in-depth survey of white discrimination and prejudice against Aborigines at Dareton on the Murray over a two-page spread and an equally intriguing two pages cabled out direct from Friday’s London New Statesman

“There was an eight-page colour comic lift-out and an almost total avoidance of the sex-drug-crime stories bordered by mammiferous pictures

Rohan Rivett wrote a critique on the first Observer.

which are a feature of some Sunday tabloids. The day’s sport seemed to be handled reasonably competently and concisely, especially for a first effort, and the offset reproduction of pictures and type was, as usual, excellent.

“It is only fair to say that seven people, aged 18 to 53, to whom I submitted the paper on Monday expressed disappointment.

“There really wasn’t a great deal of reading in it and several stories that looked promising petered out rather like creekbed waterholes in a drought.

Technically, Mr Barton and his editor, the able author of The Land Boomers, Michael Cannon, will doubtless make one firm resolution about future editions. They need a revolution in layout.

“For a first issue advertising was meagre through the 64 pages. Classified advertisements in all forms did not fill these pages and Walton’s was the only big store that took display space.

“The first issue of any new paper is notoriously prone to bugs, gremlins and minor disasters of kinds well known to every experienced newspaperman.

“The disappointment hanging over the Sunday Observer is that the staff appears to have done a mighty job in actual production, beating almost all the traditional traps.

“But the competitive flavour, the news stories, the scoops or original lines were not there. Survival beyond a few months may need (i) a patient willingness to accept continuous losses on the part of Mr Barton; (ii) a very swift resolution in present layout together with (iii) a sharp infusion of meaty content editorially.”

Race For Local Football Pools’ announced the first front-page of the Observer, as it hit the streets on Sunday, September 14, 1969.

The newspaper, in its first edition, speculated that British football pools organisation, Littlewoods, could mount a challenge to operate football lotteries based on the big English pools.

Tattersalls held the monopoly for gambling in Victoria in 1969. There was no Crown Casino, not even Tattslotto (which started as a midweek draw in 1972).

Back-page (Page 64) of the 1969 VFL premiership edition.

The first Observer front-page featured a big picture of Janine Forbes, 19, of Cheltenham, an entrant in the Miss International Beauty Contest in Tokyo, anxiously awaiting the results of the beauty pageant.

In sport, the Observer noted that Carlton screamed to a six-goal victory over Collingwood in the Second SemiFinal held at the MCG in front of more than 100,000 people.

The 1969 Grand Final coverage was headlined ‘It’s Tiger Town’. Richmond 12.13 (85) defeated Carlton 8.12 (60), with player Royce Hart

saying the win was “for (coach) Tom Hafey alone”.

The road toll for 1969 was a staggering 1034 people. Other news to end the year was 25-year-old fashion designer Prue Acton’s company going into receivership for more than $1 million, and Dr Jim Cairns’ assertion that the State Government was sweeping the abortion issue “under the carpet”.

The first Observer was at a time when Sir Henry Bolte was Premier of Victoria, and Clyde Holding was Leader of the State Opposition.

State Health Minister Vance Dickie

was reported to be ordering a special report on the Spellbound television program on HSV-7 where hypnotism was used for entertainment purposes by therapist Martin St James.

A still picture from the program shows host Garry Meadows lighting a cigarette, on air, whilst a ‘victim’ engages in a stunt in the show.

“The show (was) described by critics as ‘the sickest to ever appear on television,” the Observer reported.

In coming weeks, the Observer revealed ‘New Evidence of Army Sadism’, reporting on ‘bastardisation’ at the Duntroon and Scheyville army bases.

Prominent abortionist, Dr Bertram Wainer, hit the Observer headlines with his offer to expose details of high level police corruption to the Premier Bolte.

One of the senior policemen later charged, Jack Matthews, was jailed –and later became an Observer columnist with the ‘Hotline’ service, solving consumer problems with suppliers.

As 1969 came to a close, Rupert Murdoch had agreed to take over the London Sun daily newspaper, with the sale price between $600,000 and $2.04 million.

An advertisement in the first Observer classifieds ($1.25 for two lines, $5 per column inch) offered $7500 annual salary for the Production Manager’s job at the newspaper.

The job involved supervising a ‘weboffset newspaper plant which includes IBM magnetic tape typesetting, pasteup, camera and plate departments.

“A Goss Urbanite press will be installed in December this year,’ proclaimed the 1969 ad.

An ad for a Senior Advertising Sales Representative for an unidentified ‘metropolitan newspaper’ offered remuneration expressed thus:

“This is a $10,000 per year position. Naturally the person selected to handle the job will have to prove himself.

“In fact both the man and the company will know his worth because he will be paid in direct relation with results.

“This is why an initial salary of only $5200 will be paid. The Man we have in mind will not be prepared to work for

this and through his initiative and efforts will quickly double this figure.”

Other ads for Sales Representatives cautioned that the appointees would “have to be dignified men who can represent us efficiently.”

As times became harder, and ads tougher to sell, a 1970 ad offer representatives that “the income will be more than that paid to any other newspaper advertising representatives in Victoria”.

Early advertisements reveal less complicated times of 1969 and the early 1970s:

• Waltons city department store was one of the strong early advertisers in the Observer – with prices for children’s clothing starting at just 50 cents for Tshirts.

Perhaps there was ‘contra’ involved in the early Waltons ads, as many of the incentives provided for the network of 2000 news boys and girls were vouchers to shop at Waltons.

• Gordon Barton included a number of large ads for his IPEC and Rex transport organisations, • and Rupert Murdoch’s Truth newspaper took to taking out a notice to promote its colour Sunday edition prior to the Melbourne Cup race meeting.

Customers were invited to ‘discover the gay way to shop’ at the new

Doncaster Shoppingtown to be opened at White’s Corner.

• New Footscray Motors boss Don Lougheed offered vehicles on $25 deposit; 1962 EK sedans were on sale from $590, station wagons from $790. A 1968 Holden Torana ‘SL’ sedan was on offer for $1490.

• Murdoch Electrical offered a 70 Series Victa lawn mower for just $99, and a 23-inch Phillips TV set was available for just $1.85 per week.

The Observer led the way in fullcolour editorial presentation.

The first full-colour front-page was on April 26, 1970, with a moving ANZAC Day portrait of a single-leg veteran watching the military parade. The photo was taken by Ray Drew.

‘Next-day colour’ was something of a press novelty in that era, with Herald Gravure preprints reserved for Monday afternoon Herald broadsheet for occasions such as the Grand Final.

The Observer followed its colour front-page effort in May 1970 with Footscray’s ‘Mr Football’ Ted Whitten running onto the ‘Footscray Oval’ for his 321st retirement game.

The newspaper promoted itself as ‘cheaper than a pint of milk’ (10 cents a bottle).

Owner Gordon Barton had insisted on

Waltons department store was one of the first Observer advertisers.

colour comics being a regular feature of the Observer.

One of the comic features, in addition to usual fare of syndicated Sunday comics was Iron Outlaw.

Creator Fysh Rutherford recalls: “Iron Outlaw was created by myself and illustrated by Greg McAlpine.

“We had both just finished at Swinburne and were look ing for things to do.

“The year was 1970. Australia was going to Vietnam and China was emerging as a world power.

“The Australian identity was under threat from American TV and Japanese products.

“This resulted in a sudden surge in Australian Nationalism.

“Iron Outlaw set out to lampoon all that was going on.

“It appeared in the Sunday Observer and Nation Review. It lasted for a single year. Political correctness was not the force that it is today,” Rutherford remembers.

A snapshot of the culture of 1969-7071 can be seen in the advertisements of Gordon Barton’s Observer.

LP records – both mono and stereo –went on sale at Sutton’s Elizabeth St store for just 99 cents.

New releases, for $2.50, were available for Anne and Johnny Hawker, Zorba’s Dance, Mario Lanza in The Student Prince and Mantovani.

Barry Crocker, later to become for his exploits as ‘Barry McKenzie’, was winner of the 1969 Logie.

Prince Charles was invested by the Queen as Prince of Wales.

Television news highlighted the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne’s collision with the American destroyer Frank E Evans.

Judy Banks launched Fredd Bear’s Breakfast A Go-Go from ATV-0’s Nunawading studio in 1969, as the Observer commenced publication.

Early issues of the Sunday Observer –edited by Michael Cannon – were scarce with ‘by-lines’ to identify authors of the various news and magazines articles.

This was common newspaper practice of the era. It also disguised the identity of

journalists, employed at the dailies, moonlighting at the Observer

The Observer flw banned journalist Wilfred Buchett back home. Steed, Cyril Pearl, plus re-prints of Malcolm Muggeridge’s London Diary column from The New Statesman.

John McLaren authored the ‘This Week’ summary of news events, Don Whittington provided a federal analysis with Canberra Carousel , plus there was a TV column Private Eye by Paul Jacks, a book column by Freda Irving; Des Tuddenham, David Lee, Tom Lahiff and Fred Villiers were amongst those in the 11-pages of sports news.

Soon to join the team were cartoonist ‘Sutch’ (followed by Feiffer), writer David Martin, Niall Brennan, Alan Fitzgerald, Helen Homewood, John

Although the first edition of the Observer was totally black-and- white, a feature of Barton’s newspaper was an eight-page comics section, printed entirely in full-colour.

In coming editions, Gary Mac, of 3AK fame, introduced a Music World column, and Denbeigh Salter provided film reviews with his first critique being of The Italian Job starring Michael Caine, Noel Coward and Benny Hill.

Anthony Berry and Hazel Berry

were signed to conduct the Sunday Observer Travel Service.

Noel Turnbull contributed his share of front-pages, and other by-lines included those for Michael Stewart, Women’s Editor Kerry Walsh, motoring writer Don Gibb, and Lloyd Marshall in Perth.

Ray Drew and Mike O’Connor were photographers in those early days. Shopping columnist was Nora Payne. Peter Wharton was soon to join on board with his trotting tips, as was Peter Pearson covering greyhounds.

An early sign-on was ‘Peeping Pete’ (Vic Beitzel) with his racing observations, including the 1969 Melbourne Cup question: ‘Was Big Philou Nobbled?’

The heavily backed second Cup favourite had been scratched just 39 minutes before the start of the big race.

Five months later, the horse’s strapper, Leslie Lewis, was charged with allegedly doping the horse.

Michael Costigan had joined the Observer stable in 1969, and journalist Wilfred Burchett – who was battling with the Australian Government for the restoration of his passport – filed his controversial views as a war correspondent covering the ‘Japanese invasion of China’.

In 1970, the paper trumpeted that it had chartered a Piper Navajo aircraft to bring the left-wing journalist into Australia from Noumea, with approval finally given by Director-General of Civil Aviation, Sir Donald Anderson.

The flight also carried Observer News Editor Bill Green and Observer photographer Bill Veitch.

That week’s edition carried the headline: ‘He’s Home’, complete with photo of Burchett flanked by Melbourne lawyer Frank Galbally.

The January 18, 1970 (issue number 19) edition noted that first Observer editor Michael Cannon “resigned to devote his time to compiling a new book”.

Denis Warner says that Cannon had extracted a promise from Barton that he would not interfere editorially but on the night the first issue was to run from the presses he found Barton changing the

words ‘Communist troops’ to ‘liberation forces’ in a Vietnam story.

“He resigned on the spot but subsequently agreed to stay on. However, after three months he could no longer stand the stress of working with Barton and resigned again, this time permanently.”

David Robie, an experienced journalist in New Zealand and Australia, took over the top job.

One of the big recruitments was cartoonist Michael Leunig who started with the paper in May 1970, with his view of the Vietnam Moratorium.

Leunig expanded his name as a cartooning favourite with readers of Nation Review, and then The Age.

The final days of the Observer –Mark I – were not without editorial glory.

Bruce Hanford was one of the writers to participate in a feature series entitled ‘The Human Experiment’ which examined changing morals and standards.

Lindy Hobbs, soon to make her name in the international reporting arena, filed articulate and imaginative feature series for the Sunday Observer Magazine , albeit now in a reduced mono format. Germaine Greer’s comments were prominent.

Talented young journalist Sean

Hanrahan, who was later to edit Melbourne suburban newspapers including Southern Cross and Valley Voice , added his skills to the newspaper.

Footballer Alex Jesaulenko was signed to write for the Observer, just weeks before its closure.

So was 3UZ racing man John Russell. Nancy Cato produced a bright Horizons kids page. It wasn’t enough.

Barton had lost his nerve … and the newspaper’s political coverage became self-indulgent. ‘Another Dienbienphu?’ was the Observer headline for February 28, 1971, in the second last edition under Barton’s proprietorship.

It was a reference to a 1954 massacre when French troops were circled by Vietnamese troops, explained Barton’s favourite foreign affairs man, Wilfred Burchett.

Maybe so … but it certainly did not tap the pulse of Victoria.

The March 7, 1971 edition of the Sunday Observer again front-paged with a Vietnam story, an item about a plan for free hospital bed plans, and a teaser about Jezza’s article about sex and footy.

More revealing – in hindsight – was the double-page ad for The Sunday Australian, the 10-cent broadsheet being advanced by Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited.

Cartoonist Michael Leunig was an early staffer at the Observer.

Origins of the Melbourne Observer

IPEC transport magnate Gordon Barton published the first issue of the Melbourne Sunday Observer on September 14, 1969.

It was Melbourne’s first regular Sunday newspaper. (Michael Michaeledes, who ran the Greek newspaper Torch , officially took the honours by publishing the Sunday Post, which lasted for seven editions. Dern Langlands started his weekly Postscript Weekender newspaper in August 1969.)

Gordon Barton produced his Sunday Observer, selling copies at 12 cents each, and soon hitting a height of nearly 100,000 copies per week.

It was sold at milk bars and outlets across Victoria, as well as being distributed door-to-door by a network of newsboys and newsgirls.

The current proprietor of Local Media, Ash Long, was one of those newsboys, aged 12. Barton had enlisted 2000 youngsters, and Long was consistently in the top three sellers each week.

The Sunday Observer had a varied history between 1969-1989, and there was a hiatus until 2002 when Long resurrected the title under the Melbourne Observer banner.

For the past 20 years, the newspaper has been sold as a midweek publication, available on orde from newsagents across Victoria.

Now it is a free insert in The Local Paper , published in editions for localised areas in 40 local areas in and around Melbourne, the Mornington Peninsula, and peri-urban areas.

The first edition of the Observer raced off from a number of presses around Melbourne’s suburbs: Progress Press at Glen Iris, Waverley Offset Printers, and Peter Isaacson Publications at Prahran.

Later in 1969, a new Goss press was installed at 822 Lorimer St, Fishermans Bend. Gordon Barton, head of the Interstate Parcel Express Company (IPEC), had become a newspaper pioneer after placing full-page advertisements in The Sydney Morning Herald to

protest against Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war. Barton had joined with rival businessman, Ken Thomas of Thomas Nationwide Transport (TNT), to form the Liberal Reform Group (Australia Party), which supported Liberal Party domestic politics, but opposed both conscription and an

involvement in the war.

In that first issue, Barton published his first editorial: “Cynicism, sterility and the musty smell of the 19th century fug the corridors of power in Australia.

“This country desperately needs better men and better ideas,” opined Barton. Signing himself as ‘Chairman of

Gordon Page Barton established the Sunday Observer in 1969.

Front-page of the first Sunday Observer on September 14, 1969.

Directors, IPEC Australia Ltd’, Barton went on to say:

• ‘SO THAT we may cease to behave like frightened larrikins abroad.

• ‘SO THAT our great and growing national wealth is put to its best use and not wasted

• ”SO THAT our children are educated to enjoy a good life.

• ”SO THAT our old people are honoured and protected from hardship.

• ‘SO THAT sickness and unemployment do not become burdens which crush the spirit.

• ‘SO THAT our Aborigines are given no less attention than our overseas investors.

• ‘SO THAT our personal rights may be protected and Parliament functions as a legislature and not as a rubber stamp.

• ‘SO THAT it becomes clearly understood that the purpose of government is to serve the people and not vice versa.

• ‘SO THAT common sense and humanity displace political dogmas and slogans in our national debate.

l• ‘SO THAT we may again be proud to be Australian.

“It will be the political policy of this newspaper to support such ideas and such men

“However, as a good newspaper should, we shall try to keep our opinion to our editorials and to give space in our columns to those who disagree.

“Our policy in regard to news is that it shall be objective, complete and concise and up-to-date.

“Our columnists will be expected to be independent, plain spoken and fearless.

“For the rest, the Sunday Observer will try to inform and entertain you and your family as best it can.

“This is possibly the first Sunday paper you have bought. It is certainly the first I have published. I hope you like it.”

Barton became increasingly vocal in his political viewpoints, and it seemed a natural progression to start a Sunday newspaper in the only state in Australia where such publishing businesses had been outlawed.

Staid Victoria, 1960s style, had

legislation called the Sunday Observance Act , which banned bakers from selling a fresh loaf. from cinemas screening motion pictures, or from newspapers from even being published or sold.

The only ‘fresh’ newspapers available in Melbourne on Sunday where those trucked overnight from Sydney: the Fairfax-owned Sun-Herald, and the Packer-owned Sunday Telegraph

In Melbourne, the family-operated David Syme & Co. Ltd published The Age ; and The Herald & Weekly Times Ltd owned The Sun News-Pictorial and The Herald

Barton’s efforts to market his new newspaper were stifled. There are two versions of the story: Barton claimed the powerful Victorian Authorised Newsagents’ Association refused to open their shops on a Sunday for his paper. VANA said they were prepared to open but placed a firm order for just 50,000 papers, rather than the 100,000 or more tht Barton wanted to sell every week. Justice Anderson supported the newsagents’ version.

Instead, Gordon Barton ambitiously sought to form a network of more than 2000 newboys to sell his paper door-todoor across Melbourne.

He placed advertisements to recuit the enthusiastic kids. Ash Long recalls: “At

the age of 12, I was one of the first to apply to the advertisement in the Sun News-Pictorial for delivery people for the Sunday Observer.

“The job was simple. Deliver a newspaper every Sunday to anyone who wanted one. Oh … and there was a little extra to do. Because the Sunday Observer did not go through newsagents, the young delivery person was also responsible to sell the subscriptions, keep the records, collect the money, and forward the remittance. Not a bad expectation for two-cent per paper commission scheme.”

Ash Long continues the story: “So, from October 1969, I started my newspaper career with the Observer. Living in working-class Reservoir, my round included East Preston’s infamous Crevelli Street, nicknamed as ‘Little Chicago’, for its motor-bike gangs and crime.

“As a skinny, nerdy 12-year-old with glasses, I had the fastest push bike in Melbourne! I soon learned the essentials of marketing a newspaper in Melbourne. If Collingwood won, you sold plenty, if the Magpies lost the footy, it was hardly worth the effort.”

The first edition included a photograoh of Gordon Barton in front of a huge wall map of Melbourne, with 10

Ash Long started at age 12 as a Sunday Observer newsboy.

distribution zones supervisors, who each recruited 10 agents, who in turn had each recruited 20 newsboys.

“The system was organised with military precision by Mr Barton of IPEC, assisted by circulation manager, Mr Alan Watson,” the paper reported.

“More than 3000 copies were flown to Hobart this morning,” boasted the first edition. “Next week distribution will include Perth, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane.

“When the huge offset press ordered by the Sunday Observer reaches Melbourne late next month, the circulation will grow even bigger,” the 1969 report said.

Journalist Rohan Rivett critiqued the first edition, in a report in The Canberra Times, headlined: ‘Features, sport, but no scoops’: “Melbourne’s citizens were confronted with something new as they strolled last Sunday morning to the milk bar or “the deli” for their fresh Sabbath loaf.

“With minimum publicity – remember the big dailies had announced Sunday papers but produced nothing –Sydney’s ebullient Gordon Barton, Tjuringa Securities and IPEC Chairman and Australia Party backer, was suddenly offering Melbourne its own Sunday tabloid.”

Gordon Barton was active in politics, having been involved with the Liberal Reform Group, and then the Australia Party.

These parties had stolen the headlines of the 1960s as the nation’s third political party. Barton was vigorously against the Vietnam War and Australia’s involvement.

Gordon Barton, at times, was a multimillionaire, then next to broke; regularly used cocaine in his middle age; and was involved intimately with many women.

He died a broken man: profoundly deaf, mentally degenerated, afraid to leave his house for fear of getting lost. In his final year, he was strapped to a wheelchair after a heavy fall; he died of kidney failure and respiratory problems on April 4, 2005.

Gordon Page Barton was born on August 30, 1929, in Surabaya, on the

First six editions of the Sunday Observer, September-October 1969.

island of Java, where his father George was a Burns Philp manager for the Dutch East Indies and South Pacific.

His mother was Antoinette (Kitty) Kavllears, who was raised in Holland. Mother and son arrived in Sydney in January 1939, with Gordon enrolled at Sydney Church of England Grammar School (‘Shore’).

Gordon Barton had an older brother, Basil, who enrolled as a trainee fighter pilot with the Royal Australian Air Force at Bairnsdale.

Basil was reported as missing after his Beaufort bomber plane went missing in Bass Starit, north-west of Flinders Island.

With the entry of Japan into World War II with the bombing of Pearl Habour in December 1941, a number of ‘Shore’ students were evacuated to the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. The Japanese took control of Surabaya, interring all male Europeans.

George Barton’s monthly payments stopped, and according to biographer Sam Everingham, Gordon Barton had no idea if his father was dead, injured or a prisoner-of-war. Gordon, at age 15,

earned his first income, with the large sum of £15 from an essay competition run by a Sydney newspaper.

At the end of the war, his father was released, and moved to Port Moresby for lesser duties.

Kitty and Gordon stayed in Sydney. Gordon promised to “work harder than anyone has ever worked and become rich so that none of us will have to worry about money again”.

At age 17 he thought about becoming a journalist. He won an Exhibition scholarship to study law at Sydney University, and quickly signed up to write for Honi Soit, the student newspaper.

He later took two degrees – Arts and Economics – simultaneously. He became active in student politics. He earned £1 per day gardening. He raced a plywood boat on Sydney Harbour at weekends.

First prize was a trophy, while second prize was 10 shillings “Gordon always angled to come second,” Everingham notes.

He worked as clerk associate of Judge Harry Edwards in the NSW Supreme Court.

An advertisement promoting home delivery. October 19, 1969 - my 13th birthday delivering newspapers.

Barton was involved in Liberal Party politics, often at odds with then-Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies.

In 1950, Barton bought a truck on hire purchase, being paid to carry dangerous loads of 44-gallon drums of high-octane fuel.

In 1951, young South African, Harry Ivory, partnered with Barton, paying £850 each, to invest in a truck on time-payment. Harry would drive during University terms, and Barton would drive during vacation times.

In 1952, he was impressed with the idea of door-to-door delivery employed by Ken Thomas of Thomas Nationwide Transport.

With friend Jim Staples, he borrowed to buy a Reo truck. He combined legal work during the day, with truck driving –often 48 hours straight – at weekends.

Gordon Barton had met Yvonne ‘Vonnie’ Hand, a social work student, in 1949, and they married at the Melbourne Registry Office in 1958.

Before and after their marriage, Gordon had a number of other sexual partners, including Judy Wallace, who fell pregnant to him several times. Barton organised abortions each time.

Biographer Everingham said: “He had always made it clear to Vonnie that he was simply not the one-woman type.”

By 1957, Ivory & Barton had eight trucks, and expansion in Tasmania was a major part of the operations.

In 1958, Barton had his eye on Rex Transport, run by the McNamara brothers; and on Interstate Parcels Express Company (IPEC) operated by Charlie Nesbitt and Alf Charleson.

Gordon Barton had caught up with old university colleague, Greg Farrell, who was running his family’s carrying business. They joined forces.

They successfully had a petroleum company inject £16,000 into the business as a loan, in return for a guarantee to use that company’s fuel for all vehicles for the next 12 months.

They found loopholes to avoid paying some road taxes. They worked their way around a law prohibiting the carriage of freight by road in Victoria against the

railways; they rented a truck shed in Moama so the freight travel became interstate, and was protected by the Constitution.

In theory, freight was driven the 200 kilometres from Melbourne, unloaded at Moama, and then reloaded onto another vehicle.

The purchase of the IPEC business in 1962 required £250,000. At the time it was legal to use the assets of the company being acquired to supply the funds to enable the purchase.

A source of funds was selling the trucks to drivers, with lease arrangements in which deductions were taken from drivers’ wages.

The IPEC business was soon delivering more than 10,000 consignments daily.

Biographer Sam Everingham says by 1963 “Barton and his partner Greg Farrell were making serious amounts of money from their express freight and insurance businesses.

“No longer did the growing empire need to survive on its borrowings alone.

However, in their attitudes to money the pair were opposites.“Barton’s entrepreneurial drive meant meant he would spend the takings before they could be put in reserve. On the other hand, Greg Farrell was forever trying to conserve cash. He would drive his car into work via Gladesville bridge to avoid the 20cent toll on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.”

The Roadswift business was added. It sold the Commer trucks used in the IPEC fleet.

IPEC had a celebrated protracted fight with the Federal Government in its bid to gain a licence to move its freight by air. Federal law, under the two-airline policy, protected the interests of Ansett and TAA.

Barton used the media effectively to advocate his company’s case. A Four Corners investigative report was aired on July 24, 1965. Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies was unhelpful.

Barton said of Menzies: “He was pompus and arrogant … supercilious, exteremely patronising; he had a savage

Sutch’s recruiting poster for Sunday Observer newsboys.

ally wit, as great deal of ability that got him by, and style – yes,style.”

Menzies double-crossed the IPEC interests. Barton soon had to absent himself from IPEC matters.

His wife Vonnie suffered from a brain tumour, suffering badly, whilst raising two young children, Geoffrey (‘Tigger’) and Lucinda (‘Cindie’).

Barton continued with fighting IPEC’s battle to operate air freight, and increased his political activity, particularly against the Vietnam War which had seen conscription re-introduced in November 1964.

Barton paid $1782 to take out the full-page ad in The Sydney Morning Herald to convey a message to visiting US President Lyndon Johnson that not all Australians were “all the way with LBJ”. The phone calls did not stop.

Hundreds of people contacted him, pledging their support for an antiVietnam campaign.

New Prime Minister Harold Holt called an election. Barton and supporters – including John Crew – fought the election as the Liberal Reform Group.

There were 12 candidates in New South Wales, and 10 in Victoria. They picked up an average of 5 per cent in each of the seats they contested.

In October 1967, Barton announced a name change to the Australian Reform Movement. Occasionally its press and television advertisements were refused by major media groups. (In July 1969, the group again changed its name, this time to the Australia Party.)

In February 1968, new Prime Minister John Gorton gave the hollow promise that no more Australian troops would be sent to Vietnam.

Barton and Farrell had started Tjuringa Securities, a corporate raider, that enjoyed mixed success with its takeovers.

One of the successes was the Federal Hotel Group, that in 2019, was still in the hands of the Farrell family.

In 1969, Gordon Barton’s wife Vonnie had further reverses in her health. All knew that she was dying. She passed away on August 4, 1969. Cindie was five, Geoffrey not even two.

Next day full-colour coverage of the Pope’s visit. Nov. 29, 1970. Opportunistic newsboy Ash Long sold copies outside Catholic Churches.

A business colleague describes Gordon Barton’s behaviour immediately after the ‘funeral’ service as being regarded as “cold blooded”.

Within six weeks, Barton was launching the Sunday Observer newspaper in Melbourne. His political supporters had encouraged him with the newspaper idea, after the success of his open letter in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Melbourne did not have a Sunday newspaper, and Barton saw an opening. John Crew was invited to lead the project.

Michael Cannon, as Editor, was del-

egated the task of recruiting up to 20 fulltime and part-time journalists. Much of the organisation was haphazard.

In Gordon Barton: Australia’s Maverick Entrepreneur , Sam Everningham notes: “In November 1969 financial controller John Konstas received a phone call from a Melbourne customs clearance agent.

“‘Hello, we have a printing press here for clearance and delivery to Fisherman’s Bend in Melbourne. We need payment of half a million dollars as soon as possible.’

“‘Sorry,’ Konstas said, ‘you must have

the wrong number. We are a transport company – IPEC. We need a printing press like we need a hole in the head.’

“‘Wait a minute.’ Konstas still recalls hearing the rustling of paper down the phone. ‘Do you know a Gordon Barton?’ “Konstas’s jaw dropped.

“He admits now that his boss could often be forgetful in informing him of the sometimes enormous vast requirements that needed to be conjured up at little notice.

“A 1972 entry in his ASIO file would damn the expensive machinery as the source of ‘some of the worst subversive and trouble making literature for the anti-Vietnam and anti-apartheird and radical student movements’,”

Everingham recorded: On Sunday, December 14, 1969, the Sunday Observer became the first newspaper in the world to publish photos of the USled massacre of at least 175 Vietnamese civilians – mostly women, children and the elderly.

Gordon Barton had heard of the photographs, and had lover Marion Manton smuggled in the negatives. The images were shocking.

Initial reports claimed “128 Viet Cong and 22 civilians” had been killed in the village during a “fierce fire fight”. General Westmoreland, the commander, congratulated the unit on the “outstanding job”.

As relayed at the time by Stars and Stripes magazine, “U.S. infantrymen had killed 128 Communists in a bloody day-long battle.”

Hundreds of letters were received from readers. Meanwhile, the Observer was being regarded as “poison” by IPEC staff.

The Observer’s leftish editorial coverage offended business owners who were key customers of the transport company. “The Observer’s politics were foreign to Greg Farrell and he would sometimes be furious at the fallout,” Everingham recorded.

“However, given that Barton was dealing with the recent death of his wife, Farrell was prepared to be patient and sympathethic. “Nonetheless, John Konstas believes that Farrell pleaded

with Barton a number of times to close the paper.” Konstas said: “He enjoyed the power it gave him. He would ring up Jim Cairns and get straight through.

“It opened a lot of doors to people who he had not been able to access previously,” biographer Everingham wrote.

Within a year, Gordon Barton had opened a second newspaper.The first issue of the Sunday Review appeared on October 11, 1970.

From mid-July, 1971, Gordon Barton underwrote The Review himself.

Distribution was extended to include Adelaide, Tasmania and to New

Zealand. Later, Perth was added. Richard Walsh – who had advised Barton to start a newspaper rather than a political party – was recruited to run the Review, flying in from Sydney each week.

Barton’s decision to raise the 12 cent cover price to 15 cents sounded the death knell for the Sunday Observer.

Stuart Golding reported in Jobsons Investment Digest in early 1971 that “the hatchet men are in at Gordon Barton’s Press establishment’ which is ‘reeling under a heavy financial loss and circulation slide.

The Jobsons criticism was gleeful.

Colour comics including Iron Outlaw were part of the Observer diet.

Melbourne Observer takes a sharp turn to the right

The Jobsons Investment Digest coverage of problems at Gordon Barton’s Sunday Observer was printed by rival publisher Maxwell Newton.

“Barton’s erstwhile partner (Greg Farrell) is known to be out of sympathy with the paper and it’s leftish political line,” reported Stuart Golding.

IPEC was said to have lost up to $24,000 weekly on the paper, with sales said to be down as low as 61,000 copies: “It had moved from a 64-pager to a 48pager, and it had three editors in a little over a year.”

Barton’s press empire finally fell after he had tried to back-door the long suffering distributors by attempting to set up an independent newsagency system without them. The agents all decided to ‘go fishing’ on the same weekend.

“The Melbourne newspaper, the Sunday Observer, is almost certain to cease publication, and not be published this weekend,” reported The Age in March 1971.

“Its editor, Mr Kevin Childs, said last night he had been told this by the managing director of the Sunday Observer, Mr John Crew.

“He was also told that Mr Gordon Barton, the chairman of IPEC Australia, the company which launched the newspaper, would be talking to the staff of The Observer this morning.

“It was understood that distribution problems would be the cause of the closure. Circulation had fallen to 80,000 from an ‘all-time high’ of 120,000.

“The company had been unable to distribute the newspaper through normal outlets. It is believed the newspaper has lost its publisher $1.5 million in the 14 months of publication.

“IPEC will continue to publish the weekly Sunday Review at its Melbourne plant.”

Within two weeks of the closure of Gordon Barton’s Sunday Observer newspaper in March 1971, publisher Maxwell Newton hit the streets with his

Melbourne Observer newspaper.

Newton was editorially equipped for the task: he had been Editor of The Australian Financial Review (Fairfax) when it went daily; he had been foundation Editor of The Australian national broadsheet for Rupert Murdoch seven years earlier (1964); and he had been foundation Editor of the Sunday Independent in Perth for mining giants Lang Hancock and E.A. ‘Peter’ Wright.

That pair had also tried a short lived daily, the Independent Sun , Western Australia.

An April 1969 press report said: “About 80,000 copies were printed and sold. It is planned that the Independent will become a daily later this year or next year. Today it had 24 pages of news,

mainly feature-type and interpretative articles, no hard news; a comment section covering political, business, national and inter national trends’; an eight page lift-out advertising and real estate section; an eight-page colour and black and white comics lift-out and a 12page sporting section lift-out.”

In an ABC-TV interview, Newton said the Independent’s political views would be more to the right than The West Australian

It was to be a serious coimpetitor to Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times. Newton already had the template for his Melbourne Observer, two years later.

Newton employed his second-incharge, Peter Ferris, to helm the Melbourne weekend paper.

When the Observer closed in 1971, Maxwell Newton stepped in.

First issues, each 32 pages, came off the presses of Regal Press at Claremont St, South Yarra.

Much of the standing artwork had been pinched from the paste-up benches of Gordon Barton’s Sunday Observer at 822 Lorimer St, Fisherman’s Bend.

Football identity Harry Beitzel was contracted to provide the sports content; later in the year there was a bust-up in this partnership, and Beitzel went on to launch Sunday Sport as a successor to Footy Week, and then just 26 issues of Sunday News. Beitzel lost more than $200,000 in 26 weeks.

From the start, the Newton Observer had more than its fair share of legal and commercial challenges.

Just several weeks into the life of the Melbourne Observer, Ipec Australia Ltd lost its attempt for the new newspaper to use word ‘Observer’.

Mr Justice Adam of the Victorian Supreme Court also refused a request that the Newton companies be prevented them from saying they had taken over the Sunday Observer

IPEC sought the restraints against Newton, publisher Optimus Holdings Pty Ltd, and printer Regal Press Pty Ltd.

The Melbourne Observer interests deceived the public into believing it was an IPEC publication.

Mr Justice Adam said wide and TV publicity had been given to the closure of the Sunday Observer.

By early 1972, things weren’t going perfectly for Maxwell Newton either. In February, Newton discontinued printing in Canberra.

His editorial controller Cyril Wyndham said all publications except the Canberra Sunday Post would be shifted to Brisbane.

Wyndham attributed the ACT closure on poor transport from the national capital to major cities.

All production employees were given one week’s notice. Mr I. Jordan, secretary of the Canberra branch of the Printing and Kindfred Industries Union, said there were about nine members of his union and several casual and female staff who were not union members.

Newton was said to be out of the country.

Several months earlier, Maxwell Newton Country Newspapers Pty Ltd sold the Bega News, the Eden Voice and the Moruya Examiner businesses to a syndicate including publishers Jack Bradley and Arthur Bradley of Temora, and J. Woods of Queanbeyan.

Maxwell Newton’s proprietorship of the Observer stretched from 1971 to 1977. It was a heady period in Australia’s history that saw the election, and the subsequent dismissal of the Whitlam government.

It was an era that included the introduction of the metric system, colour television and a wide change of social values.

Newton was a central character in Australian political history. As an employee of Fairfax in the 1950s, he had been the speechwriter for Labor leader Herbert ‘Doc’ Evatt.

As the Editor of The Australian for Rupert Murdoch, he received government leaks from leadership aspirant Billy

Former Government Minister Peter Howson (The Life of Politics ) wrote: “At dinner Bill asked me why I thought he was not trusted.

I told him about the views of the party on his relationships with [the publisher Max Newton which had caused so much comment during his trips around the world for the IMF conferences, and also the relations with the Basic Industries Group.

“He asked me again all the same sort of questions we’d had earlier and said whom should he turn to to get confirmation, and again I said to the same people who helped him get the deputy leadership some two years ago, but that at present it was necessary for him to build up a new image if he wanted to have any chance in the ballot.

I felt that blunt speaking was necessary at this time, and while I don’t think he is grateful to me at least I showed him what I believe to be the true

McMahon. Newton was an enemy of short-time Prime Minister, John ‘Black Jack’ McEwen.

Liberal politician Billy McMahon was a news source for Newton.

situation, which was confirmed in later talks during the week.”

With his proprietorship of a popular red-top Sunday newspaper, and seeing what sales his editorial team under John Sorell could achieve, Newton went on television in 1973, saying that ratings and circulations are built on entertainment, sex, violence and sport; politics is notoriously low on the scale of most people’s interests.

Newton included some political coverage in his papers, but the emphasis was quickly changing to his formula of “tits, trots and TV”.

Red-top newspapers could be a litiguous business. Michelle Downes, 21, Miss Austrlaia, took out a Supreme Court writ in October 1973 claiming unspecified damages from Newton’s additional Midweek Observer newspaper.

Photographs published by the newspaper showed per posing nude with an Afghan hound.

Miss Downes sued Newton, editor John Sorell, and Optimus Holdings Pty Ltd. The Writ said that the photographer Rinaldi agreed that the photos would never be published by any third party.

Prime Minister Gough Whitlam sued the Melbourne Observer newspaper in April 1974, over reports over land investment. Defendants were the proprietors, Optimus Holdings Pty Ltd; publisher John Sorell; and printer Donald McAlpine.

The Canberra Times noted that the newspaper gave undertakings to Mr Justice Kaye – without any admissions of liability – not to repeat allegations made against the PM, who claimed he had been defamed in the April 21, 1974 issue. Daryl Dawson QC represented Mr Whitlam.

In November 1975, Newton’s Observer campaigned hard against the Whitlam government, including the front-page headline: ‘For God’s Sake, Go!’.

When the Malcolm Fraser-led Liberal Goverment won the December 1975 Federal election, Newton’s newspaper led with the headline: ‘Thank Bloody Christ!’. Newton had supported the

November 11 actions of GovernorGeneral, Sir John Kerr, in dismissing the Whitlam Government.

(Interestingly, it was Kerr – as a Federal Court judge – who had come to Newton’s rescue in the previous decade. Newton had faced Police raids at his Canberra home when the Liberal Government decided he was receiving too many leaks of information.)

Newton joined forces with adman John Singleton to promote the Workers Party as part of the pre-1975 Federal Election campaign.

Newton made headlines when he referred to Jim Spigelman, permanent Department of Media, as a “jewboy”.

Workers Party director Bob Howard said Newton’s remark was not meant to racist or ant-semetic but “just to describe a type of personality”.

Mr Howard continued: “I and the Workers Party definitely do not agree with what Mr Newton said but he should not be kicked out of the party for it.

“We rapped him on the knuckles, but everyone is capable of making a mistake. He is definitely of great value to the Workers Party and we allowed him to continue with us. There is no chance of the Workers Party being even remotely fascist, nazi or anti-semetic.” Newton refused to apologise for his remark on a Melbourne television show.

Maxwell Newton’s Observer reports on the 1975 Federal Election.

Melbourne Observer publisher Maxwell Newton was fined $200 at Richmond Magistrates’ Court on June 28, 1976 for publishing indecent material.

The fine was the least of Newton’s worries. On June 22, 1976, Mr Justice Menhennit approved a scheme of arrangement for five companies associated with the publication of the Sunday Observer.

“Under the scheme creditors agree not to proceed with suits against the companies. In return they will be paid dividends decalred from time to time by the administrators of the scheme, Mr J. Romanis, accountant of B.O. Smith and Co.”

Liquidators were appointed on May 31, 1976. Sacked by his company, part of Newton’s publishing business was sold by liquidators in 1977.

The Sunday Observer business was sold for $500,000 to Peter Isaacson, who later successfully sought to adjust the price to $425,000.

By June 1978, Maxwell Newton, now bankrupt, came under questioning by the Registrar in Bankruptyy in Victoria, Mr M.J.D. Zacharin.

Newton said his companies had under-captilised and too dependent on loan money.

There had been a deficiency of more than $2 million contracted mainly by Mr Newton’s gauarntees of loans to his companies.

Under a scheme of arrangement, the group of companies was headed by Regal Publications. An initial five-year debt moratorium had been sought.

Maxwell Newton’s companies decided to add mail order business revenue, from product advertisements printed at no cost in the firm’s newspapers.

Newton would grab the cash that would arrive daily in envelopes posted by the Observer’s faithful readers. There were many products including T-shirts, special publications and merchandise.

Often, there were problems with people receiving the goods they had purchased including Scream magazine, Sherbet Fan Club and other pop group

items. The Victorian Director of Consumer Affairs reported that 18 people said they had sent money to Optimus Holdings Pty Ltd and had not received the goods they had ordered. A further dozen complaints followed.

Writing in The Canbeera Times, Voter’s Voice columnist Graham Downie noted further complaints investigated by the Canberra Consumer Affairs Bureau: “Consumers were advised to seek other sources for their purchases, as it was believed that orders might not be filled.”

A June 1978 newspaper report said: “Mr Newton said that after he had been “sacked” by the manager of the scheme last year, he had worked for companies which were enagged largely in the prtoduction and distribution of pornographic literature.

“His wife’s company – Dinasel Pty Ltd, for which he new worked for $100a-week – ran a postal order business in “poronographic books, sex aids and that sort of thing,” he said.

Giving reasons for his bankruptcy, he said the income from the Sunday Observer group rose from $12,000 a week to $70,000 or $80,000.

The circulation had continued to rise despite a substantial price increase and competition from the Sunday Press

In this “period of euphoria” he became concerned about circulation problems and his ability to produce more newspapers. he was responsible for the overspending on plant.

The error wa due to “a lack of balance in my thinking which I would in turn attribute to a degree of emotional immaturity on my part”.

“The Registrar asked why Mr Newton had gone into the pornographic literature business. Mr Newton said:

“The basic problem we had was to keep our presses going all through the week. These publications were produced were produced virtually for the cost of the newsprint. You can crunch out comics at very low cost using your presses through the week.”

Maxwell Newton’s spectacular commercial fall in Australia was well illustrated in his letter to The Canberra Times (November 20, 1979): “Sir – It has been reported that the Commissioner for Taxation has stated I understated [my] income by some $198,000 for 1969-70 ... [that in] 1975-76, and that I was charged some $93,000 in additional tax.

“While it is open to the Commissioner for Taxation to issue these fanciful assessments and to deploy the enormous resources available to him (in my case, two senior officers trailed me for two years), it is another thing to be paid the money deemed owing.

“In my case, the commissioner has not been paid one red cent of the fairy-tale sums he has invented. Nor is there any likelihood he will be paid a farthing.

– Maxwell Newton, Toorak, Victoria.”

Newton resorted to printing comics to keep his presses busy.

Observer grows ‘in leaps and bounds’

The rapid growth of the Melbourne Observer newspaper was reported upon by Norman Thompson of The Review on July 22, 1972:

“The enigmatic Max Newton has set Melbourne newspaper circles abuzz with plans to upgrade his Sunday paper, the Melbourne Observer.

“Newton has signed up one of Australia’s most highly-paid journalists, Walkley winner John Sorell of the Melbourne Herald, to edit the Observer.

“Sorell won wide acclaim for his startling revelations of water torture by Australian servicemen in Vietnam some years ago and won a Walkley last year for his exclusive interview with the then newly deposed Prime Minister, John Gorton.

“Sorell will make the sercond top staffer from the Herald to join Netwon. Observer news editor, Peter Fitzgerald, was formerly a senior eporter in Flinders St before joining the Newton stable. The Observer is also reported to be seekingthe services of a top reporter from Murdoch’s Melbourne Truth.

“Newton is after new premises closer to the city to house his expanding Observer operations. While holding a steady chunk of the Melbourne Sabbath market, Newton’s Observer has been forced into stepping up its reader chasing to combat the tabloid Telestrine.

“The offset-printed Observer has gone ahead in leaps and bounds in recent months, going very strong on magazine and features. Ads have been a bit light but the features are winning a loyal readership.

“First move in the popularity stakes came with the Observer’s printing of large extracts from the Little Red Schoolbook , and sales soared to an alltime high that day.

“Further planned extracts from the book were withdrawn on legal advice. As yet, the Observer has no foreign service, but I understand plans are afoot to take a UPI wire in the very near future.

“Newton’s Sunday venture was born

last year out of the sudden closure of the Review’s lamented sister paper, the Sunday Observer.

“When the Barton-owned Sunday Observer was launched, late in 1969, plans were publicly mooted to eventually step up operations with the eventual aim of coming out as an evening daily. The big question now is whether Newton himself is pursuing this course.

“Another Newton move in Melbourne causing much talk and speculation is the sudden interest he has shown in the national teenage pop weekly, Go-Set. Newton men have been looking closely at the publication and certain exploratory

moves towards acquisition are expected within weeks.

“Newton’s renewed activity in Melbourne corresponds with a winding down of interstate operations.

“The organisation’s sole remaining printery, Shipping Newspapers (Qld) Ltd in Brisbane, has been sold. The latest issue of Graphic Arts sees the sale as “another link in a chain of events where has refelcted a sharp decline in the fortunes of one of the most rapidly expanding publishing groups in recent years”.

“At the height of the Newton expansion, the group acquired the Perth-based

John Sorell was enticed from The Herald to the Melbourne Observer.

Fenton Publications, a shipping journal in San Francisco, the Brisbane printery of the old Shipping Newspapers Group along withg its own local building journal, the Sydney trade journal publisher ABC Publishing Co Pty Ltd and culminated in the launching of the Observer.

“However, in the period of just over a year Newton has disposed of a number of NSW country newspapers at a fraction of their purchase cost and abandoned several others, curtailed operations in Perth, disposed of and merged a number of business journals and closed in March this year the group’s head printery at Fyshwick.

“Under the reoganisation Sydney will now become the base for production operations, housing typesetting and composing facilities and relying on outside printers.

AReview Special Correspondent continued in the same July 22 edition in 1972:

“When Supermax socks it to ’em, he really goes. Max Newton, that is, and on Thursday he had the newly formed Melbourne Press Club roaring at his outrageous speechmaking.

“Max got a record attendance of about 60 upstairs in the carpeted seediness of Hosies pub at the cornerof Elizabeth and Flinders Sts. Except for some young spies it seemed an audience of the weary and the dreary.

“Not so Max, who won his audience immediately by saying that friendless journos were treated “like shit on the carpet”.

“Then he described his Melbourne Observer colleague Frank Browne as “a great freedom fighter and one of Australia’s leading drunk journalists”.

“After a bit of detail about battling with lawyers (“They tell you to write nothing except the weather,”) over a story on Sir Reg Ansett, Max told of the day when his libel writs added up to $42.17 million and his assets $165,000. What will you do if they succeed, he was asked.

“I’ll be left a bit short,” was the laconic reply. “And the Bank of New

South Wales will be left a bit short too.”

“Some suitably scurrilous remarks about Labor and Liberal leaders followed and then a heavy serve for the proprietors:

“Warwick Fairfax is a very interesting proprietor … he used to call me up all the time and talk about world affairs because he had heard I went to the University of Cambridge.”

“Newton said he’d put his leathersoled shoes up onto scratch Warwick’s desk – and always ask for an ashtay which he never had.

“Rupert Henderson once said to him, “That Fairfax, that Fairfax … he goes out at night with that Jew bitch and comes in in the morning thinking he’s fuckin’ Tarzan.”

“Rupert Murdoch wants to be a respectable publisher but keeps publishing millions of pictures of tits. It was Murdoch who put “a mate of mine called Walter Kommer” in his office to listen to Max’s phone calls”.

Passing quickly over the proprietors’ propensity for getting involved with women, he mentioned how Rupert came to him and suggested that a blue-eyed blonde on The Australian be promoted from second-year cadet to B-grade. Rupert later married her.

He advised the journos: “Keep all letters from ministers, destory all the documents from officials … only documents will tell you really what is going on in the government … you have to infiltrate.”

The Melbourne Observer grew quickly under Maxwell Newton.

Sunday Observer vs Sunday Press

Just 2½ years on from Maxwell Newton’s launch of the Melbourne Observer newspaper on March 20, 1971, his major opponents – The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd and David Syme & Co. Ltd – joined together to start the Sunday Press newspaper (cover price 15 cents).

Its final edition was published on August 13, 1989. An early editor was veteran Melbourne journalist Jack Cannon; later editors included Dallas Swinstead and Colin Duck.

The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd published its Sun News-Pictorial morning newspaper, and The Herald afternoon newspaper, Monday-Saturday. David Syme & Co. Ltd published The Age, Monday-Saturday.

Newton’s Sunday Observer had grown too successfully, and both major chains wanted to protect their turf. The Sunday Press was to be a ‘spoiler’.

In the final edition, Sunday Press Editor Martin Thomas reflected on the beginnings: “Little promotion, no home delivery, no newsagency sales and under special agreement to protect The Age, no classified advertising.”

Initial copies of the Sunday Press were printed on the press of Standard Newspapers at Cheltenham, the suburban newspapers subsidiary of the HWT. The final edition came off the The Age presses at their Spencer St headquarters.

“The Sunday Press had been created to fill two gaps in the market, one to present some kind of opposition to the Observer, then selling 200,000 copies and the other to present a united front by the joint owners of the new paper – The Herald and Weekly Times, and David Syme, publisher of The Age – to stop Rupert Murdoch from gaining any kind of foothold on the publishing scene in Melbourne.

“Basically, then, the Sunday Press was born as a “stopper”, without any great enthusiasm by the proprietors, with little foresight of the potential Sunday market.

“They were shortsighted on both counts – the Sunday newspaper market offers the greatest potentiasl of any in Victoria, and Rupert Murdoch was to eventually come anyway, albeit without an invitation.

“In those early days, the Sunday Press settled down to a circulation in the low 80,000s. Staff were minimum and shoestrings seemed in keeping with the tone of things. Around 1976, the paper started to top 100,000 copies and was

even turning a modest profit.

“Gradually sales grew, ’til in 1979 sales were level with those of the Observer. By 1986, a turning point year, the circulation of the Sunday Press approached 150,000.

“From then on, every audit of the Sunday Press has shown a record figure. By April [1989], it reached almost 200,000. Since the closure in June [1989] of the Observer, sales hovered around the 240,000 mark.”

Sunday Press Election Edition on December 14, 1975.

Maxwell Newton’s life after the Observer

After his publishing empire had collapsed in the mid-1970s, Observer publisher Maxwell Newton moved to America and restored his career.

Maxwell Newton was described by Jim Grant, is his Grant’s Interest Rate Observer (Oct. 22, 1984): “By 1977, his net worth was $3 million or so at the top. He was re-building his fortunes in pornographic books and sexual paraphernalia.

“Smut was the next logical step, Max relates, because he’d been printing dirty magazines in order to spread the costs of his printing operations over a wider base.

“It was [Rupert] Murdoch who helped him back into journalism, Max says, first, by refusing to print his ads for ‘sexy grab bags’ in the Murdoch newspapers (a crippling blow to Max’s marital aids business) and then subsequently by publishing his articles in The Australian and by bringing him to the New York Post.”

Current day Melbourne Observer Editor Ash Long takes up the story: “On the weekend before Easter 1985, the company I was working for at the time (Victorian Media Corporation) was drastically in need of an injection of funds.

“A chance call to Newton, in Connecticut, saw me on board a Qantas 747 within 24 hours to see if those funds could be obtained through Newton’s help.

“So to New York in 26 hours flat, and a train ride from New York Central, hundreds of feet under the giant Pan Am building crossing 44th Street.

“Newton was waiting for me at the end of an hour’s ride of the hourly Stamford commuter train to Drayton in Connecticut.

Snow-cold Drayton saw an auburn-going-white-haired Newton meet me in his small two-door Ford Escort. His wife, vivacious red-haired Olivia, greeted me and introduced herself as ‘Mrs Newton The Third’.

“First, we travelled to the local FordMercury-Lincoln dealer, where Max and

I moved across to his newly-serviced Lincoln, for which Olivia had told Max had done some deal.

“Max borrowed $10 from me to fill up with unleaded gas, and we were on our way. Newton had pride in showing me houses he had purchased on his earnings, included in which was a $150,000 annual salary from the New York Post.”

“Max prided that he was flying out son Antony with wife Mary and their two boys. Antony had worked Max in distributing his Canberra Post giveaway newspaper, and had farmed at Berrima in New South Wales.

Max said that he had left Australia on November 14, 1978, with Olivia – and $5.

“Now he had four homes, including his own $½-million property in Wilton –the most affluent county in America. He said he was now financially secure and had again hit the big-time professionally.

“The Fed – a book he had published was featured in The New York Times Books – had sold well with 130,000 copies. He was doing well on the lecture circuit including work with Lockheed in Los Angeles, Zurich, New York, London and in the Bahamas.”

Ash Long continues: “As we drove,

Maxwell Newton rebuilt his newspaper career in America.

Max had to take ‘piss-stops’, which he said, were caused by his diabetes. He took a capsule which he said was ‘lithium nitrate’, a metal which he said took away depression and fear.

“He told of his days since as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and that he had recognised God.

“We lunched at Harpers, a local restaurant, where I confused the Americans by asking for a gin squash. Newton was satisfied with a tomato juice.

“We discussed possible financing for my Australian company including names of brokers, contacts at banks, and other possible sources fo dragging us out of trouble.

“Newton recalled how he had obtained funds from Marrickville Holdings, from doctors, and from a finance broker in Melbourne.”

“Back at his home, Newton’s home included facsimile, four computers with ‘Wordstar’ programming and facilities for electronic mail-boxes for subscribers to his various news services through ‘MaxNews’.

“Newton said he was contributing not only to the The New York Post , but also three columns weekly for the Sydney Daily Mirror , and one each for the Daily Telegraph and The Australian, as well as The Times in London.

“We recalled his days of his home at 607 Toorak Road (‘Towart Lodge’), funded by Eastern Suburbs Permanent Building Society cash.

“Max laughed about losing the contact to print the Church of England newspaper at Regal Press because publishing hands used spoils of pornogaphic newspaper to bundle the religious papers.

“Max turned his mind to Australia. That previous weekend he had revealed making undercover payments of cash to a Premier (Robert Askin of NSW), and he had been interviewed on Good Morning Australia , and Terry Willesee’s TV program. Former Sunday Observer producer John Brook was producer at GMA .

Ash Long continues: “The last contact that I had was a return Christmas message in early 1986 with Olivia

writing that Max was slowly recovering from a stroke.

Max Newton died on July 23, 1990, at the age of 61. Friends gathered at St John’s, Toorak, for a Thanksgiving Service on July 27. Speakers included Alan Armsden and Jim Marrett, who had worked for Max at the Sunday Observer.

A few years after Newton’s passing, his daughter Sarah penned Maxwell Newton — a Biography (Fremantle Arts Centre Press).

She explained how her father had been a manic depressive as was his father before him. Long said that in the years when he was privileged to work alongside Newton, this mental condition was virtually unknown.

Newton’s former employee, Richard Farmer, wrote: “Living next door to the Newton family and working with the great man in the mid-1960s, I was as aware as the little girl Sarah of Max’s moods but had no idea what caused them.

“Today, hopefully, things would be different and unknowing GPs would not pack a patient off with the packets of Mandrax which, combined with alcohol, caused some of the worst of Max’s excesses.

“It is the frank way in which the daughter has written about her father’s mental condition which makes Maxwell Newton — a Biography such an unusual and interesting book.

“It was a measure of the strange

1990.

mixture that was Max Newton that he could not be gracious in victory.

“For years he led the public fight against tariff protection in Australia. Yet when his schoolmate Bob Hawke presided over the victory Max had fought so long for, Max could not find a good word to say.

His disrespect for the schoolyard wimp he remembered from his youth overwhelmed his judgment of the Prime Minister who had made the courageous decision. Max Newton was churlish about Bob Hawke to the last.

“Not even Hawke’s lowering of all protection to negligible levels could overcome his dislike of the boy at Perth Modern School that he and John Stone had teased remorselessly.

“Max did not like Hawke in his youth and he did not like him when he died and nothing Hawke said or did between times would have changed the judgment.

“Without the shadow of a doubt, there was a touch of jealousy in the way Newton reacted to Hawke and many of the other public figures he wrote about during his 35 years in journalism.

“Max always thought he was cleverer than the mere mortals who ran the country or the companies he observed and perhaps, for much of the time, he was.

“With the exception of Sir Frederick Wheeler, he was certainly the brightest, most inspiring and most infuriating man I have worked for,” Farmer said.

Newton’s obituary in The Australian. July 24,

Dodgy days with Dern as $1.2 million ‘transferred’

Richmond printer and publisher Dern Langlands gave Local Media publisher Ash Long (aged about 15) a part-time job at Regal Press – at the princely sum of $1.50 per hour – as a hand-inserter (‘collator’) on his Postscript Weekender and All Sport Weekly publications.

Long says: “I would wag school on a Thursday afternoon. The job was simple: insert a pre-printed section of the newspaper into another. It was a fourhour shift, and I took home $6 in cash. It was about 1971-72.

“I had no idea what was going on behind-the-scenes at Regal Press.”

In the late 1970s, the Victorian Legislative Assembly ordered a report on monies advanced fromthe Co-Operative Farmers and Graziers Direct Meat Supply Ltd to interests including the printing businesses of Dern Langlands and Maxwell Newton.

Mr Alex Chernov, of Owen Dixon Chambers (later Victorian State Governor, 2011-15), tabled his report in September 1979. Chernov said sums of more than $2 million were transferred out of the Society, with “at least $1.2 million” transferred “to Mr Langlands and his company”.

Chernov examined the role of Mr Leslie Smart, who had been appointed in1968 as the administrator of the Society “with full powers to manage its affairs as he saw fit”.

In late 1974, Smart became Executive Chairman. Smart had experience in assisting other companies “including the ANZ Bank, and government and semigovernment organisations.

“He was also involved in publishing a monthly journal for a church and in advising it on financial and business matters”.

Chernov told Parliament that Smart’s reputation was very high as a financial adviser, “particularly as he re-organised the society to the extent that it commenced to earn profits”.

“His commercial judgements and decisions were rarely, if ever, chal-

lenged,” the report concluded.

Smart became a financial advisor to Langlands in 1970. Chernov says the circumstances were that “Mr Langlands applied to the ANZ Bank for an increase in his company’s overdraft limit to $350,000 in order ‘to meet overdue creditors, provide (working) capital and to enable completion of the motel building’.”

Langlands, at the time, was building the grand Belvedere Motor Lodge motel building in Church St, Richmond, near the site of the old Richmond brewery, and coincidentally on the corner of Newton St.

He was also running the printing business next door, known as Regal Press which published the Postscript Weekender and All Sport Weekly newspapers.

The presses at Richmond, which produced a large number of handbills, particularly for supermarket and chain store groups.

ANZ Bank agreed to the overdraft on the condition that Smart oversee an examination of the accounts. Later, to reduce the overdraft, loans were taken with Custodian Nominees and Alliance Acceptance, on the basis of two mortgages over the Belvedere Motel.

Dern Langlands was at the centre of an inquiry about loaned monies.

However, Chernov reported: “It is doubtful whether (the businesses) would have survived for long with the infusion of funds which Mr Smart procured for them from the Society.”

Chernov’s report, however, dis not deal with other Langlands businesses, which Dern said numbered 27. These included the fabrication business Foldin Industries, a chain of ‘Toyrific’ toy stores and other enterprises.

Negotiations were well in hand by early 1974 for Maxwell Newton “or his nominee” to purchase Regal Press for $1.5 million, payable in monthly instalments over 10 years.

Chernov said that Smart felt obliged to help fund the businesses of both Dern Langlands and Maxwell Newton to support a marketing strategy he was developing for the co-operative.

The idea was to distribute handbills weekly with loss leader meat specials from supermarkets and butcher shops … and the meat being supplied by the CoOp.

At that time, Dern Langlands was considering the re-launch of his daily Postscript newspaper.

In 1969, he had launched the free daily, with revenue from advertisements budgeted to pay all expenses. Postscript was not a commercial success.

Dern Langlands said he had expected to make $800,000 on the daily newspaper, but instead lost $800,000 in a number of weeks.

Smart was quoted to say the losses were more in the order of $400,000.

The Belvedere Motor Lodge motel in Church St, Richmond.

Front-pages of All Sport Weekly.

Postscript Weekender was established by Dern Langlands in 1969.

Origins of the Northcote Budget, Preston Post

Local Media Pty Ltd publishes local Northcote Budget, Preston Post, Reservoir Times and Whittlesea Post editions of The Local Paper.

Local Media publisher Ash Long began part-time work at the Leader group in 1973 as a teenage ‘stringer’, paid 4½-cents per published line for community news columns.

At age 18, he worked part-time in the Leader Northcote newsroom as a journalist, later becoming full-time as a newspaper manager, group classifieds manager, promotions manager, and senior executive.

He was Regional Manager at the Northcote, Doncaster and Eltham offices, until September 1983, before embarking out with his own business.

The Northcote Budget heritage name used today is a nod to the Leader-Budget newspaper that was produced in the City of Northcote from 1936-1966.

The Northcote Leader had its beginnings on January 21, 1888, produced by R. Lemon and brothers (The Rev.) A.H. ‘Henry’ and W. Richardson from Brighton.

Emergence of a rival, the Northcote Examiner, forced the brothers to establish an office in Northcote, which increased the local news content and soon ensured that the paper – and its sister publication, the Preston Leader – were appealing commercial properties.

The Northcote and Preston editions were identical except for a masthead swap.

“We ask the forebearance of our readers for the very small amount of llocal news in the first issue of the Northcote Leader and Preston Record ,” they welcomed.

“This owing to our arrangements being yet incomplete. We hope in our next and subsequent issues to present our readers with a full budget of local and district intelligence.

“Our thanks are freely tendered for the very liberal patronage given and promised, which we shall do our best to

merit. Intending subscribers will kindly send their orders to Mr Plant, High Street, Northcote, agent for this journal, who will supply it every Saturday morning.”

In 1890, twin brothers, John and Robert Whalley, from Creswick, bought the newspapers, which they retained until 1924, working to build local content and extending readership as far north as Whittlesea. Both brothers were active in the local community and John edited the Northcote Leader for 30 years.

They were quick to sell themselves, boasting within its masthead: ‘Largest Circulation and Best Advertising Medium in the Northern Suburbs. Circulating in Northcote, Preston, Thomastown, Epping, Whittlesea,

Fairfield, Heidelberg, Clifton Hill.’

At the outbreak of World War I, the papers published by the Whalley brothers brought coverage of the hostilities as the proprietors were touring Europe when war was declared.

By the time the news of the declaration of war reached Australia on August 5, 1914, the Leader had already carried several letters from the brothers describing their time in England, Scotland, Switzerland and northern Italy.

John Whalley’s tenure ended in 1924 when the brothers sold the papers on May 1, 1924, to Decimus Mott (pictured), who created the Leader company four years later. His son, George Horace Mott, led the group from1946.

Decimus Mott and Sons took over the Northcote Leader in 1924.

Alliances with other titles meant that during the 1960s more than a third of Melbourne’s population was reading papers owned or connected to Leader .

Decimus Horace Mott was born in Hamilton, Victoria, was born on March 10, 1873, to George Henry Mott and Allegra Haidee Charnock. Decimus passed away in October 1947 at Heidelberg, Victoria.

The childern were George Horace Mott (1903-1968), Walter Thomas Mott (19005-1990), Gladys Ada Mott (1907-1995), Margaret Agnes Mott (19000-1015)) and Robert Reginald Mott (1911-1989).

“Prior to the year 1888 Northcote had no local newspaper and the district had to rely upon the service of the Fitzroy Mercury and the Collingwood Observer,” noted the 1933 Leader Jubilee Issue.

“Their beginnings were small, the paper having no great circulation and little advertising support. With all the energy and ability they could command the new proprietary set themselves out to improve and popularise the paper, and it was not long before they had the pleasure of seeing their efforts bear fruit, as first the Northcote council, next Preston, and then Epping made the Leader the official organ of their municipalities.”

The Mott family’s Australian dynasty dates back to a dark winter’s night in June 1853 when Londoners George Henry Mott and his bride landed at Sandridge (now Port Melbourne) on the Elizabeth Wilthen.

He was 22, she 21. Although trained for a legal career, he sought work on The Argus newspaper, later transferring to The Morning Herald.

Even then the media was like the stage, with journalists moving from business to business. In 1854, George Mott was Editor of the Mount Alexander Mail on the Castlemaine goldfields.

Within another year, George Mott was Editor and part-owner of Beechworth’s newspaper, the Ovens and Murray Advertiser , operated today by Hartley Higgins.

George Mott also started the now defunct Federal Standard at Chiltern.

An early 1888 copy of the Northcote Leader.

In 1856, Mott crossed the Murray River. The story is that the crossing was made in a bark canoe paddled by a native through two miles of swirling floods. Mott’s new paper was to become The Border Post, serving Albury’s population of 645.

New South Wales Premier Neville Wran gave this description to a special Border Mail supplement in May 1978 to celebrate the opening of new presses: “A dissenter-born, a crusader self-inspired, George Mott spent the next dozen years printing papers simultaneously at Albury, Chiltern and Beechworth, arguing the great issues of 19th Century colonial life.”

George Mott also worked at The Spectator in Hamilton, with five of his sons running papers variously at Bordertown, Port Melbourne, Hawthorn, Flemington, as well as The Essendon Gazette and Kew Mercury

The family suffered a reverse in the bank crash of 1893, and several sons went to Western Australia when gold was found there.

The sons printed at Coolgardie, starting The Western Argus at the new gold rush in Kalgoorlie, and another paper not so well known, T’Other Sider.

Unable to finance the rapid growth of their other publication, The Kalgoorlie Miner , son Decimus and his brother sold out for £2000, returning to Albury in 1903 to compete against The Daily News and Banner .

The fights were difficult with the

eventual takeover of The Daily News affected. The Border Morning Mail was founded as a daily in 1905.

In 1924, the family split, with Hamilton Mott’s family remaining at Albury, to continue publishing The Border Morning Mail. Legend has it that one of the parties was to move, decided on the flip of a coin.

The development of the Preston area, saw the Preston Leader become the Preston Post, incorporating the opposition Preston Progress (September 5, 1924-September 19, 1930).

First editions of the Whittlesea Post are said to have commenced around 1935. The State Library of Victoria holds copies from 1946.

Local Media Pty Ltd honours the traditions of the Whittlesea Post, Whittlesea Advertiser and Whittlesea Chronicle. The Whittlesea Advertiser was published from 1995, succeeding the Whittlesea Chronicle which commenced in July 1990.

In 1936, the Northcote Leader (until then a paid newspaper) combined with The Budget, to produce a free 10,000circulation weekly.

Advertising rates were listed at 4/- per inch single column per insertion, with classified ads costing 1/- for 14 words.

In 1955, the Reservoir Times commenced. It was re-badged as the Northern Times from August 1959.

By the 1970s, there were seven major suburban newspaper owners in Victoria, with Leader controlling 17 papers.

Origins of the Diamond Valley News, Heidelberger

Local Media Pty Ltd publishes a local Diamond Valley News edition of The Local Paper.

The name Diamond Valley News was first used in 1959, after the Heidelberg Publishing Co. Pty Ltd was formed as a partnership between Leader Publishing Co., and the publishers of the Heidelberg City News.

Development of The Mall retail centre at West Heidelberg following the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, plus the appearance of an opposition Diamond Valley Mirror (November 12, 1958-April 27, 1966), spurred the start of the free Diamond Valley News and Heidelberger mastheads.

The first issue of The Heidelberger was on November 12, 1958. Another opposition newspaper, the Diamond Valley Local appeared briefly from November 3, 1953 to February 24, 1956.

In the early 1960s, Heidelberg Publishing Co. Pty Ltd started the East Yarra News , succeeded by the DoncasterTemplestowe News (later Manningham Leader ).

It had local offices in the tower of Doncaster Shoppingtown which opened on September 30, 1969.

It had opposition newspapers including the Eastern Suburbs Mirror and the Doncaster Standard. The Doncaster and Outer Circle Mirror was produced from Kew from November 15, 1957.

The commencement of the Heidelberg News and Greensborough and Diamond Creek Chronicle as a paid newspaper had taken place on March 26, 1897, with Eltham incoporated into the subtitle from 1916-1930.

The office was based at 101 Upper Heidelberg Rd, Ivanhoe, and it had a busy job printing operation, later combined with Pickwick Press at Bell St, Preston, and later at 18 Spring St, Thomastown.

The Advertiser newspaper, based locally for a time at the Hurstbridge Post Office, had succeeded the Evelyn

Observer newspaper established in 1873. From the mid-1920s until its closure in 1942, The Advertiser was printed at the Leader Publishing Co., Northcote.

The Advertiser had been under the ownership of Decimus H. Mott and Sons, when they had arrived in Melbourne from Albury.

Identities involved in Heidelberg City News had included A. Roy Ford, Fred Laird and John Morgan.

The Rosanna Diamond Valley News edition appeared from 1959-1964, with the Diamond Valley News title commencing from the Diamond Valley municipality’s creation.

A special commemorative edition was published on September 29, 1964. The Diamond Valley News title continued until 2001, when the Diamond Valley Leader title was adopted. Banyule and Nillumbik editions were published.

A major opponent, Valley Voice (and briefly, its sister newspaper, Heidelberg Voice) was produced for 78 issues around 1978-79.

At a time soon after Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s rise-and-fall, the Valley Voice newspaper was founded as a free, weekly local publication with

directors including teacher Geoffrey Wells, Australian Democrats-linked Neville Loftus-Hills, Liberal businessman Ian Marsden, ad man Les Schintler and graphic artist Fred Baker. Terrence Henderson was Company Secretary.

One of the paper’s leading proponents, serial ALP Federal candidate David McKenzie, was later to lose his house from investments backing the enterprise.

They were different times. In 197879, Eltham was a political boiling pot.

Under the editorship of Flowerdalebased Sean Hanrahan, Valley Voice was printed under contract on Peter Isaacson’s press, for just 78 weeks.

Late into its life, companion publication Heidelberg Voice started (and finished) with local MP John Cain enthusing: “I’m delighted to see there’s a new voice for the Heidelberg citizens. For too long there’s only been one paper. I welcome the new paper.”

The Voice was gone within months, following the applied marketing of Leader’s Rob Bradley.

Leader Newspapers printed the final edition of its Diamond Valley News in April 2020.

Leader’s centenary issue of 1997 celebrating the Heidelberg News.

Souvenir edition of the Diamond Valley News from September 1964.

Origins of the Evelyn Observer

Local Media Pty Ltd publishes a local Diamond Valley News edition of The Local Paper.

The earliest chapter of local press history in the Diamond Valley can be traced to October 31, 1873, with the first issue of the Evelyn Observer, published from a school house at Kangaroo Ground.

The newspaper changed its name to The Advertiser after the time of the arrival of the railway to Hurst’s Bridge (Hurstbridge) in 1912.

Andrew Ross, the district’s first school master was the Evelyn Observer’s first proprietor, and he enlisted the help of a printer, John Rossiter, who became the first editor.

They served from 1873 to 1885. Then began the extraordinary period of 36-year service of Robert Charles Harris, followed by C.T. Harris “for Executrix”, partnered for a whilefor several years by T.W. Beard.

The earliest surviving issue is October 15, 1875, held at the State Library of Victoria.

The newspaper circulated in Eltham, Lilydale, Heidelberg, Whittlesea, Yan Yean, Kangaroo Ground, Diamond Creek, Anderson’s Creek, Alphington, Ivanhoe, Epping, Northcote, Preston, Yarra Flats, Morang, Yering, Caledonia, Healesville, Fernshaw, Marysville, Greensborough, Templestowe, Ringwood and Upper Yarra.

Robert Charles Harris became the proprietor and editor from 1885 and continued in this role until his death in 1921.

The newspaper continued under abridged titles of the Hurstbridge and then Eltham Advertiser , it was overtaken by other titles across the Diamond Valley and ceased publication in 1942.

Decimus Horace Mott moved from Albury to Northcote in 1924 to take over the Leader newspaper at Northcote and Preston which had been established in 1888.

In July 1927, Decimus acquired The Advertiser at Hurstbridge from George

Printing of The Evelyn Observer at Kangaroo Ground.

Philip Armstrong. Single copies were on sale at threepence each.

The local Advertiser office was alongside the Hurstbridge Post Office Store which was operated by H.W. Smith – “Authorised News Agent for All Papers”.

The Mott name first appeared on the imprint on the front-page from the July 8, 1927, issue: “Printed and published by Decimus Horace Mott at the office, Amos St, Hurstbridge”.

Much of the content in initial editions was about Northcote and Heidelberg, ‘lifted’ from the Leader.

In the July 15 issue, an announcement was made: “Within the last few weeks the Advertiser has been purchased by Messrs D.H. Mott and Sons, who also conduct the Northcote and Preston Leader.

“The Advertiser has been greatly increased in size and improved and this necessitates the installation of larger and more modern plant the paper is being temporarily turned out from our branch office.

“We ask the indulgence of opur large and increasing circle of readers during the transition periodm which we are endeavouring to make as short as possible.

“As all are aware, the removal of heavy machines is work which requires time.”

The July 22 issue had an item headlined ‘The Advertiser: Congratulations On Its Improvement’.

“By every mail we are receiving letters of congratulation on the marked improvements effected in the Advertiser.

“We print a letter from Mr W.A. Laver, president, Kinglake Progress Association, giving his views – ‘I otice already a great improvement in the style of the Advertiser , and congratulate you and hope that your endeavours will be justly appreciated, and that you will get an even wider circulation.’

“We would remind our readers that newspapers, like other businesses, cannot live on air, and require the material support of all in the way of becoming subscribers, advertisers and also patrons of the printing department; also their

moral support.

“All items of news, social, sporting, etc., are welcomed, as well as letters on current topics, etc.

“In order to keep up the standard of the paper, and still further improve it we wish the whole-hearted support of all local and district residents.

“The efficiency of a newspaper depends on the support accorded to it.”

The new proprietors advised their advertising charges:

•12 words under the heading of For Sale, Wanted, &c., 1s. per inserton.

•Over 12 to 18 words, 2s. per insertion.

•Over 18 Words. Advertisements will be charged strictly by the inch, 4s. per insertion.

“Births, Deaths, Marriages and Bereavement Notices 3s., verse additional.

“Special contracts for standing advertisements.”

The Mott family’s control of The Advertiser lasted nine years. They sold the title at a time when their Northcote Leader expanded as a free distribution paper ( Leader-Budget).

Enter Herbert Arthur Davies ‘of Kinglake’. “In taking control of The Advertiser I feel that I.am not coming as a stranger to the district.

“For the last three years I have been interested in farming at Kinglake and in my weekly visits to the mountains I have met many residents and subscribers to the newspaper.

“I am a native of Victoria and have been engaged in press work in this State for over 30 years, first in Bendigo, and later representing the Country Press in Melbourne.

“For the last 25 years I have been a member of the literary staff of the Melbourne Argus where I was in turn chief law reporter, leader of the State Parliamentary staff, leader of the Federal parliamentary staff, deputy chief of staff, first assistant sub editor and finally in charge of cables and foreign news.”

Davies had been State President of the Australian Journalists’ Association. He was a member of the Diploma of Journalism Committee of the University

of Melbourne. The Eltham and Whittlesea Shires’ Advertiser had had a proud history over 69 years.

The weekly newspaper had started on October 1, 1873, as The Evelyn Observer (and South and East Bourke Record).

The newspaper name changed from The Evelyn Observer to The Advertiser George Philip Armstrong had proprietorship in 1923, and Peter Beaton was owner from 1924-26, before Armstrong returned for 15 months. (In 1895, Armstrong had been a partner in the Opunake Times, at Taranaki, New Zealand. In the 1930s, he briefly owned The Yea Chronicle.)

Leader Publishing Co. boss Decimus Horace Mott took over the business from July 15, 1927. The Advertiser was conducting its local business from the Hurstbridge Post Office premises in Amos St, but the printing of the newspaper was moved to the Leader headquarters in High St, Northcote.

From June 19, 1936, Herbert Arthur Davies ‘of Kinglake’, took over proprietorship.

Frank G. Perversi, in his 2002 memoirs – From Tobruk to Borneo: Memoirs of an Italian-Aussie Volunteer –gives a snapshot of the times. “I found myself on the staff – status ‘cub’ – of the Eltham and Whittlesea Advertiser which covered the whole area encompassed by Greensborough, Eltham, Warrandyte, Panton Hill, Queenstown (now St Andrews), Kinglake, Kinglake West, Whittlesea, Arthurs Creek, Mernda, Tanks Corner (now Yarrambat) and back to Greensborough. The paper was set and printed by Motts in High Street, Northcote.

“I was the sole member of the staff engaged in general reporting, advertising space salesman, studying journalism and sometimes delivering small parcels of newspapers to the scattered agents.

“The paper was owned and operated by Herbert Arthur Davies, ex cable subeditor of The Argus and erstwhile lecturer in journalism at Melbourne University, a tall, dry, reserved, ethically and austerely cynical man who seemed to have outlived humour but who occasion-

ally emitted a single ‘ha’ in appreciation of a play on words – usually uttered by him as an example of a journalistic faux pas.

“A returned soldier, he was an aloof man but kind and helpful. My wage was one pound plus two one-hour lessons per week on many aspects of journalism which encompassed much more than one would expect.

“Mounted on a 500cc Silver Streak AJS motorcycle supplied by my parents (yes, I was lucky that they were willing and able to help me) I systemically covered the whole area in search of news, reporting anything and everything.

“Accidents and crimes from police rounds, courts of petty sessions, municipal council meetings, progress associations, sports events and sports clubs, agricultural shows, floods and fires, births, marriages and deaths (hatched, matched and dispatched).

“I covered everything, even describing social events, annual balls and the gowns worn by the social beauties. A gossip col umn too and the occasional feature article.

“All day I rode, refreshed by the odd cold beer at those fine news sources, the little bush pubs, collecting material – and wrote until 2am. I loved it. Only in features or obituaries was I permitted my free flowing style.

“In news reportage, the formula was simple and rigid: ‘newsworthiness, brevity, accuracy, thoroughness and never mispell a name’.

“Before many months, the blue pencil was scarcely used and I was writing most of the paper. No comparable progress was made as a space salesman but the experience of interacting with a broad spectrum of people while news gathering was to prove of great value many years later as a real estate agent. The future looked good.

“Shortly after the war was declared in 1939, Mr Davies retired, selling the paper to Mr Arthur Brindley, a young journalist who in retrospect I suspect paid all he had and perhaps more to buy it. In any case, he wasted no time in warning me that he could not afford the appropriate wage. Not that he really

needed anyone; it was only a one-man paper.”

Brindley took over The Advertiser in October 1939, just weeks after the start of the war. Davies announced the sale in the issue of September 29, 1939: “This is the last issue of The Advertiser under my editorship, as I will be leaving next week for Charlton where I have bought the local paper, the Charlton Tribune.

“The Advertiser will in future be conducted by the new editor and proprietor, Mr. A. Brindley.

“In this, the final issue under my control, may I take this opportunity of thanking the subscribers and advertisers for the support they have given me in the past and for the great help I have received from them in gathering news over such a wide area as that covered by The Advertiser .

“Mr Brindley is an experienced journalist and will, I feel sure, give them an efficient and accurate news service.

“The local paper is the only means people in country districts possess of learning of the happenings in their district, and those who conduct such journals have to depend to a great extent on the assistance and goodwill of the residents.

“May I express the hope that the same support and encouragement in the way of news and advertisements will be given to Mr Brindley as was given to me.”

Davies had been living at Luck Street, Eltham. Advertisers were asked to phone JW-1046, the office of Leader Publishing Co. at 481 High St, Northcote.

(The local private phone line of Greensborough 166 was also given.) It could not have been a worse time to take over a fledgling newspaper.

The Advertiser that Brindley took over in 1939 looked to be a busy six-page weekly. Advertisers included C.M. Banerham’s Auction Room, Greensborough; Lyon Bros. Motors, Eltham; Smith’s Radio Service, Montmorency; Eltham Hardware Store; C. Rouch Timber, Heidelberg; Neil Smith Water Supply, Epping, The Ideal Store, Hurstbridge; Greensborough

Garage; R.L. McQueen Rural Supplies (K.W. Smith, local agent, Lower Plenty); W.G. Apps & Sons Funeral Directors; Macarthur & Macleod Stock Agents; Whittlesea Butchery; H.J. O’Brien, Baker, Greensborough; Elliott’s Post Office Store, Greensborough; Briar Hill Timber and Trading; Diamond Creek Wine Saloon; V.A. Edmonds, Butcher, Greensborough; J. McClenaghan, Builder, Montmorency; Ray Rogers, Builder, Panton Hill; McNab and McNab Solicitors; plus a back-page full of classified advertising.

“Having taken over control of The Advertiser from Mr. H. A. Davies, I wish to introduce, myself to its readers and advertisers, and also to the residents of the districts in which the paper circulates.

“I fully realise the tremendous assistance which Mr. Davies received from the residents in supplying news items and advertising and I hope that you will be willing to accord me the same help. Being almost a stranger to the district I am not yet familiar with the activities, but I hope in a short while to have everything at my finger-tips.

“It is my intention to take a keen interest in the matters which in terest and affect the residents, and I will maintain the same service as Mr. Davies supplied to you.

“I will be living in the district, at “Kooringarama”, Ford St, Eltham, the telephone number being Greensborough 88.”

It appears the final issue was published on August 28, 1942. No explanation can be found why the paper suddenly shut. Perhaps paper rationing introduced in World War II was a factor. Maybe Brindley’s declining health influenced the decision.

Within a few short years, Arthur Brindlay was dead. The Argus published notices on May 2, 1956, noting that he was husband of Adele, and father of Dale.

He died after a “long and painful illness”. The tribute quoted “Dulcius Ex Asperis ”, translating to ‘Sweeter after difficulties’.

Origins of the Free Press and the Knox News

When Leader Newspapers ceased print production of The Free Press in the Dandenongs in 2016, Local Media Pty Ltd quickly commenced publication of The New Free Press in the following week (July 7, 2016).

The commencement of The New Free Press was done with the blessing of News Corp., owners of the Leader group, which continued an online presence under the Free Press Leader title.

These days, Local Media’s presence in the area is with the Knox-Sherbrooke News edition of The Local Paper.

Ash Long, Managing Director of Local Media Pty Ltd, was keen to honour the 70-year tradition of The Free Press, which had started in 1946 under the proprietorship of John and Eleanor (‘Nell’) Bennett, who had been publishing the Ferntree Gully News , which was established on May 26, 1923.

Long had been Manager of the Knox and Mountain District Free Press , from November 1978, shortly after it had been taken over by Leader Associated Newspapers (trading locally as Maroondah Associated Newspapers), after a protracted war with Rupert Murdoch’s Cumberland Newspapers division.

In 1979, the Free Press team based at the Belgrave office included Long (manager), Kevin Pearman (editor), Margo Coward and Peter Nielsen (news) [later Robyn Gunn], Pam Stuart and Jill-Anne Jordan (advertising).

Other team membes, located elsewhere, included Pat O’Donnell (photographer), Tony Kneebone (sports), John Jones and John Shaw (real estate advertising), Alan Houldcroft (motoring).

Reception was handled by Kaylene Sibbald (later Bowen). Cadets Leigh Jellett, Trevor Streader and Craig Wilkins were also seconded to the team at times.

Despite being a thorn in the side of the Shire of Sherbrooke, The Free Press was official newspaper for the municipality, with the audited circulation being 32,962 copies.

At that time, The Free Press was housed in temporary premises in the First Floor of the Morson Court Building, at the corner of Terrys Ave and Main Rd, while builder Ilya Kostezsky refurbished the traditional home of 30 years at 596 Main Rd (Burwood Hwy).

Keen to re-launch The Free Press which has been publishing 24-page issues, Long developed the idea of a

special 76-page ‘100 Years of Local press’ nostalgia edition of the newspaper (April 12, 1979).

A tenuous century-long link was created with re-telling the stories of regional newspapers including the Dandenong Advertiser (Swords Brothers), the Oakleigh and Fern Tree Gully Times, and the Fern Tree Gully News.

Scoresby residents were keen to break away from the Berwick Shire, and this was one of the ongoing stories of the early days. The Dandenong Journal joined in the coverage, and competition between the proprietors was fierce.”

The Fern Tree Gully Times was incorporated in the Croydon, Ringwood and Mountain District Post from June 1956.

Shortly after World War I. the first issue exclusively for the Mountain District appeared – The Mountain Tourist .

The publisher, Arthur W. Madge, as Belgrave chemist, sold copies off the platform of the Belgrave railway station.

William Tennant Buchanan was the editor, and he would quickly set himself up as the watchdog of council affairs.

After arguing about editorial policy, Madge and Buchanan parted company, and soon after The Tourist folded.

The Mountaineer, an exciting no-

The Free Press office in Main Street, Belgrave.

punches-pulled publication replaced it. Editorial policy was firm: “For the cause that lacks assistance, ‘gainst the cause that needs resistance, for the future in the distance – and the good that we can do.” William Buchanan was managing director.

Throughout late 1920, The Mountaineer , in line with America’s prohibition of alcohol, campaigned rigouroulsy for the cancellatyon of public house liquor licences.

Buchanan organised a mammoth publicity stunt with the exhibition of two tons of locally grown berries, to promote tourism to the area.

An advertisement in an issue in December 1920, invited people to watch the building of a Belgrave Roman Catholic church in one day. “Can 100,000 feet be nailed on in one day?” the publicity queried.

The Mountaineer closed about 1923, as suddenly as it started.

It was followed by The Pilot, published by another local man, Mr L.D. Bear.

Ralph Hodges, proprietor of The Box Hill Reporter took over The Pilot in May 1923, and renamed it The Fern Tree Gully News.

In 1924, Mr A.C. Ostram took over The News and faithfully reported the Shire’s news in the weekly paper for more than 12 years. Ownership changed again in 1936 iwth Mr N.W. Gill taking over.

Soon after World War II, Mr John Bennett of Upwey began The Free Press. It soon absored The Fern Tree Gully News and earned as reputation as a paper which said what it thought.

Other local papers have included The Fern Tree Gully and District Times, Eastern Ranges Echo and Knox Gazette

All – including the sister KnoxSherbrooke News – were incorporated into the Leader network.

In the special ‘100 Years’ supplement in 1979, Nell Bennett recalled the early days, with a description of her husband John, as man of vision: “He looked toward the future- for the improvement of facilities. for the whole community.” She listed him as founder, editor, chief

typesetter and head salesman. John Bennett died in 1969 after a long illness.

Mrs Bennett kept the business going, but explained the sale of the newspaper in afront-page announcement: “Friends have been urging us to stop working so hard – or what happened to John Bennett will happen to us.”

The Knox News was first published on April 19, 196. It traces its origins to

a local Knox Sererance Association newsletter.

In 1970, the Knox News was under the proprietorship of Patrick Hegarty, Neville Hoare and Judith Norton.

Leader bought the Knox newspaper business in 1972, soon expanding it to become the Knox-Sherbooke News.

At one stage, the Knox-Sherbrooke News was printed tri-weekly.

An early copy of The Mountain Tourist.

Origins of the Lilydale and Yarra Valley Express

Local Media Pty Ltd publishes a local Lilydale and Yarra Valley Express edition of The Local Paper.

The Lilydale Express was first published in July 1886 by William Axford, originally as a bi-weekly (Wednesdays and Saturdays, then changing to Fridays).

It had the sub-title of the Healesville, Wandin, Yallock, Yarra Flats, Warrandyte, Ringwood and Eltham Chronicle. It stated its circulation area as throughout the Shires of Lilydale, Bulleen and Eltham.

Since then the Express had 15 owners and it was sold to the Leader group in 1971.

Thomas Oliver owned the Express with Henry S. Webb from May 13, 1887, to June 3, 1887, and then with Thomas Bronwell until May 1, 1889.

He was sole owner for two years before handing over to Edward Lincoln. By December 31, 1891, he was back as owner. In all, he edited the paper for 25 years.

A 44-page souvenir edition, largely compiled by journalist Robin Northover, was published on February 16, 1972, to celebrate the centenary of the Shire of Lilydale.

At that stage, 5000 copies were sold weekly, before the newspaper became a free distribution weekly. It carried a cover price of 5 cents. A ‘gold’ souvenir of the Express was produced by Leader in 1986 for the newspaper’s centenary. They currently sell for $25 per copy.

The Croydon Mail newspaper (incorporating the Mt Dandenong Advertiser ) was launched in 1922. The neighbouring Ringwood Mail newspaper was founded by Albert Charles Ostrom, through Ostrom and Sampson, on January 9, 1924.

After Mr Ostrom’s death in 1936, the newspaper was bought by Norman Welham Gill of Lilydale, the proprietor of the Lilydale Expres s, who ran it until it was taken over by Clarence Sleeman after World War II. It was later absorbed

early sketch of the Lilydale Express office.

into the Elliott Group, and then the Leader group.

One of the prominent identities in both the Express and the Mail was Harald Cameron Nicolson, known under the byline of ‘Lerwick’, after his birthplace in the Shetland Islands, Scotland.

For some years, the Yarra Valley News appeared as an Express wrap-around. It

was formed in 1966 by a merger of the Healesville Review and Warburton Mail.

The Warburton Mail had commenced publication on October 19, 1927.

The Express was renamed in May 2001 to Lilydale & Yarra Valley Leader.

The progenitor of Local Media Pty Ltd published the Croydon City News, Ringwood City News and Valley Voice in 1984-85.

An

Origins of the Murrindindi Regional Edition

Local Media Pty Ltd publishes a regional edition of The Local Paper across the Murrindindi Shire, also circulating in the rural areas of the Mansfield, Nillumbik and Whittlesea municipalities.

The first edition of The Local Paper appeared in some sections of the Murrindindi Shire (Flowerdale, Glenburn, Strath Creek, Yarck, Yea) and Whittlesea on February 17, 2016.

It expanded rapidly soon after to areas including Alexandra, Buxton, Eildon, Marysville, Narbethong, Taggerty and Thornton, with sister editions introduced in the Mitchell Shire, and Yarra Ranges Shire.

Local Media Pty Ltd’s Publisher, Ash Long, has a press association with the Whittlesea municipality dating back to 1973, when he was an editorial ‘stringer’ for the Whittlesea Post newspaper produced by the Leader Publishing Co.

Long purchased The Yea Chronicle business from Tom Dignam (pictured) on April 2, 1984. The Long family continued its proprietorship of The Chronicle until 1993, commencing other eidtions in Kinglake, Whittlesea, Mill Park, Yarra Glen, Broadford, Kilmore, Seymour and Nagambie. He later produced The Yea Advertiser and sister editions.

Local Media Pty Ltd produced The Phoenix, a special purpose free newspaper in the 18 months after the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009.

Local Media Pty Ltd donated $1.3 million of advertising to local businesses in the bushfire recovery area, to help local people get back on their feet. The Phoenix included a weekly section called The Local Paper throughout 2009-2011.

The Yea newspaper started life as The Yea Telegraph in October, 1885, under the proprietorship of Richard Roland Cramer, Michael Lawrence Hickey and Andrew Robinson. The newspaper became The Yea Chronicle in 1890 with owners as follows: • 1890-1896: PatrickGalvin,

• 1896-1900: Edwin Howard Dobson, • 1900-1907: Norman Dugald Ferguson,

• 1907-1927: Major Frederick George Purcell,

• 1927-1929: Elizabeth Barbara Purcell, • 1928-1932: William Henry Tomkins, • 1934-1936: George Philip Armstrong,

• 1936: James Vincent Gannon,

• 1936-1968: Thomas Michael Dignam and Edward Leo Dignam, • 1968-1984: Thomas Michael Dignam,

• 1984-1993: Ashley Lawrence Long and Fleur Marian Long, • 1993-: Alexandra Newspapers Pty Ltd.

Local Media Pty Ltd is not connected in any way with Alexandra Newspapers Pty Ltd.

Norman Dugald Ferguson was raised at Flowerdale Station, Strath Creek. being the third son of Donald Ferguson, a popular settler, and prominent in the affairs of the Broadford Road Board. Norman Dugald Ferguson was instrumental in the creation of the Stock & Land newspaper. A press report from June 6, 1929, noted that he had died at his residence, ‘Vernon’, Armadale: “The deceased gentleman was of a retiring diosposition, a fine type of Australian native, and one who was deservedly trusted and highly esteemed by all who had opportunity of estimating his admirable qualities.”

Ash Long with Yea Chronicle identity Tom Dignam, 1980s.

Origins of the North-West Editions

Local Media Pty Ltd publishes a local North-West edition of The Local Paper. It circulates in the municipalities of Brimbank, Hobsons Bay, Hume, Maribyrnong, Melton, Merri-bek, Moonee Valley, Moorabool and Wyndham.

It incorporates the traditions of the Brimbank Messenger, Broadmeadows Observer, Essendon Gazette, Hume Observer, Moonee Valley Gazette, Werribee Express, Western News and Western Times.

Local Media Pty Ltd Publisher Ash Long was Editor of the Bacchus Marsh Express and Melton Express newspapers in 1982-83. He was instrumental in organising its merger with the MeltonBacchus Marsh Mail (Syme) in early 1983.

The Bacchus Marsh Express was a weekly newspaper, founded by George Lane, and first published in July 1866.

From October 1866, the paper was published by Christopher Crisp (pictured) and George Lane, with Crisp acting as editor, and Lane as the printer.

The paper later became known as The Bacchus Marsh Express and general advertiser for Ballan, Melton, Myrniong, Blackwood, Gisborne, Egerton and Gordon districts after absorbing the Melton and Braybrook Advertiser , the Werribee Advertiser and the Bacchus Marsh Advertiser.

Christopher Crisp was made a member of the Australian Media Hall of Fame. The citation says that he “typifies the contribution that regional newspaper journalists made to the development of Victoria in the 19th Century.

An assisted migrant from London, Crisp worked first for the Melbourne Herald before moving to Bacchus Marsh to work as a compositor in 1866.

Soon, he was editor of the Bacchus Marsh Express. The Werribee Express and The Melton Express expanded his reach.

He campaigned for local reservoirs, a new railway, the forming of agricultural societies and the creation of the Com-

monwealth of Australia. The words of this small-town editor were read by some of Australia’s most influential politicians and judges.”

Long was also Editor of News-Pix Weekender in September 1983, and the Western News in the late 1980s.

The origins of the Broadmeadows Observer, Keilor Messenger and Sunbury Regional News (as well as the Essendon Gazette) are linked with Broadglen Publishing Co.

A sound example of local newspaper

business was when some Leader staffers, Ray Foletta and Bob Grant, joined production man Ian Nankervis, in producing the Broadmeadows Observer newspaper.

The ‘Broadglen’ group, later in partnership in Leader , went on to include the Essendon Gazette, Keilor Messenge r and The Regional (a merger of papers from Sunbury, Macedon Ranges, Lancefield and Kyneton).

Ralph Wilson, a 64-year-old Englishborn journalist was based at Leader’s

Christopher Crisp was Express Editor from 1866.

An early Local Media publication was the Sunday Advertiser - Melton Bacchus Marsh Edition on May 8, 1983, printed at Westernport Printing as a commercial handbill for Melton Regional Shopping Centre.

Northcote office, writing for the Coburg and Brunswick papers on a lineage basis. Always alert for fresh copy, he turned his attention to the area north of Coburg just awakening from the sleep of the post-war years – Broadmeadows.

The people who should have been reading the Wilson reports were neglected because Leader’s Coburg Courier distribution stopped short of the Broadmeadows shire boundaries.

Bob Grant, as News Editor of the Leader group, began reporting the events of Broadmeadows Council on Monday nights.

In the early morning hours he hand to handwrite ‘lead’ stories from the council meeting and have them available in Tuesday’s Courier . It wasn’t long before stories from Broadmeadows were taking frontpage prominence.

Wilson suggested to Leader management that they start a newspaper in Broadmeadows, but it failed to interest a company in the throes of its own rapid expansion.

Wilson and Grant then began discussions with Ray Foletta, who was advertising production manager at Leader and it was agreed that they all put themselves out of a job and “abandon the substance of their careers for the shadow of a newspaper enterprise in Broadmeadows,” they recalled in their 21st birthday souvenir of their Broadmeadows Observer in April 1977.

Two other Leader people were also recruited for the plunge – Perce Robertson, who was employed on a casual basis for selling tradesmen ads and writing local news items; and George Elliman, an assistant in the advertising department.

The trio had a name, expertise, enthusiasm, faith and courage – but definitely no money. However, their severance pay enabled them to spend a couple of weeks selling ads, insisting on clients signing an order book, which they took to the Glenroy branch of the Commonwealth Bank.

They showed the order book proudly to Bank Manager Joe Lonergan, who provided a £400 overdraft for one month.

The first issue ‘went to bed’ at Standard Newspapers, Cheltenham … and the rest became history. The Broadmeadows Observer expanded, with an St Albans-Deer Park and Outer Western Suburbs Observer edition from November 19, 1958. This later became the Keilor Messenger.

The company – which became Broadglen Publishing – tried the Essendon News against the established Essendon Gazette. They lasted five weeks, but had to close because of lack of working capital. Instead, they purchased the Gazette!

The Essendon Gazette, Flemington Spectator, Broadmeadows and Keilor Reporter was established on August 23, 1888.

Next takeover was Eric Boardman’s Sunbury News, Lancefield Mercury,

Gisborne Gazette (1892-1965) and Romsey Examiner, to create the Regional News Gazette.

Later, a 20 per cent share in the Ballarat News was purchased. Other holdings included a photographic store headed by Kevan Evans, stationery and printing businesses, toy shops, and other retail businesses.

The Mott Family at Leader increased links with Broadglen, after becoming printer for the newspapers. Broadglen papers were also marketed under the Leader group banner.

When Long left the Leader group in September 1983, the Broadglen and Syme groups gifted the News-Pix Weekender newspaper business to him. It was a spoiler product against the opposition Telegraph titles in Bacchus Marsh and the Macedon Ranges.

News-Pix Weekender on September 18, 1983

In 1983, the company experimented with a number of titles including Video News and the Avoca Mail.

Origins of the Waverley Gazette

Local Media Pty Ltd publishes a local Waverley Gazette/Monash Gazette edition of The Local Paper.

The newspaper commenced publication as the Glen Gazette on Februray 8, 1961, under the auspicies of the Coleman-Kingsway Traders’ Association.

The new paper filled the gap of the Mulgrave Mercury, established on November 4, 1949, and absorbed in the South Eastern Standard News-Pictorial from February 25, 1960.

The Glen Gazette changed its name to the Waverley Gazette on December 20, 1961, under the control of journalist James Hattwell and his wife, advertising representative, Winifred ‘Wyn’ Hattwell.

The company, Waverley Offset Printers Pty Ltd, was established in Railway Pde, bringing one of the first web-offset presses to Australia. The printing company became part of the Leader group.

The progenitor of Local Media Pty Ltd published the Waverley City News as an independent weekly community newspaper in 1984-85.

The Waverley Gazette office in Railway Pde.

First issue of the Waverley Gazette in 1961.

Origins of the Southern Cross Weekly

Local Media Pty Ltd publishes a local Southern Cross Weekly edition of The Local Paper.

It circulates in the municipalities of Bayside, Boroondara, Glen Eira, Kingston, Melbourne, Port Phillip, Stonnington and Yarra.

It incorporates the traditions of the Southern Cross newspaper. John Stott published the first issue on Saturday, February 27, 1871 on a single sheet of paper folded into four and priced at one penny.

Turner and Wilson took over from Orford in 1890 and increased the size and scope of the paper.

From 1900 C.T. Alexander was proprietor. The initial circulation took in Brighton, Elsternwick, Moorabbin, Cheltenham, Oakleigh, Mulgrave, Mordialloc, Frankston, Cranbourne and Berwick.

After his start with the Elsternwick Advertiser on June 7, 1947, Peter Isaacson took control of the Southern Cross , using it as an umbrella masthead for his Elsternwick Advertiser, Caulfield Advertiser and Carnegie Courier titles.

As the Southern Cross prospered, he took over the printing works from Parkinson and Brookes.

Denis Warner, writing in Peter Isaacson’s biography Pathfinder, said: “He went around to people to whom they owed money and told them he accepted responsibility for paying the debts, but that this would take time.

“All agreed. Gradually, he paid off the debts and began to develop the commercial printing business.”

The first issue of the Southern Cross under Isaacson’s control appeared in October 17, 1947.

The Sandringham News was produced from 1900, incorporating the Hampton News, Black Rock News and Hampton Standard

The South Melbourne Record was an integral local newspaper from 1868.

A number of other local newspaper titles came and went over the intervening 150 years.

An early copy of the Southern Cross.

Standard Newspapers, azt one time led by the legendary Eddie Trait, was based at Cheltenham, and published a number of titles which circulated in the bayside, Dandenong, south-eastern and Peninsula areas.

Standard Newspapers, in later years, became a wholly owned subsidiary of The Herald & Weekly Times Ltd.

Its titles were later absorbed within the giant Leader Newspapers group, which ceased printpublication in 2022, but continues online publication of a number of Leader titles.

Progress Press was a market leader in the south-eastern suburbs.

Another publisher in the late 1980s and early1990s was Eric Beecher’s Text Publishing which started with the Melbourne Weekly newspaper-magazine, particularly in areas such as Boroondara, Stonnington and Bayside.

Its successor titles include the Domain Review magazine which, at time of publication, has resumed in Bayside and Boroondara-Stonnington editions, after a publishing hiatus in 2020-22 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Origins of the Mornington Post, Dandenong Advertiser

Local Media Pty Ltd publishes Frankston and Mornington Peninsula editions of The Local Paper.

It incorporates the traditions of the Mornington Peninsula Post, Southern Peninsula Gazette and the Hastings Sun

The Peninsula Post began in 1913 as a re-plated edition of the Frankston Post.

The Mornington Standard was born on October 5, 1889, at a time when the town’s population was 794.

William Crawford Jnr headed a chain of bayside newspapers from Cheltenham, Standard Newspapers, from 1928.

A Mornington Leader newspaper commenced in 1953, was purchased by Westernport Printing and Publishing in 1988, and was merged with the Southern Peninsula Gazette in 1995.

The Southern Peninsula Gazette was launched as a paid newspaper in 1953.

The Hastings Sun was an off-shoot of the Koo-Wee-Rup Sun (Westernport Publishing Co.) headed by Chris Fisher

An early photo of Main St, Mornington. and Phillip Gannon. News Corporation continues to publish online coverage for the region under the Leader and Standard names. Local Media Pty Ltd is not connected in any way with News Corp.

Local Media Pty Ltd publishes the Casey-Cardinia edition of The Local Paper. It incorporates the traditions of the Cranbourne Sun and the Dandenong Advertiser. The Mornington County Herald was established on March 22, 1889. The Koo-Wee-Rup Sun and Cranbourne Sun commnced in 1893. The Lang Lang Guardian , from February 22, 1902, was owned variously by J.C. Ryan, H. Furze, T. Henderson, G.F. Hopkins, the last named setting up the Koo-Wee-Rup Sun, incorporating the previous titles. Later owners included A.E. Millard, W.J. Bath, Bill Giles and Chris Fisher, who started the Cranbourne Sun, Hastings Sun and Phillip Island Sun.

The Dandenong Advertiser,

Cranbourne, Berwick and Oakleigh Advocate was first published by the James Walter Swords in 1874, succeeded by his sons Henry Falkiner Swords and Frederick Walter Swords.

Mr Swords came from England in 1840 under engagement to a Melbourne newspaper, and in 1842, with the late Mr Thomas Wilkinson, founded the Portland Guardian, which is believed to have been one of the first provincial newspapers published in Victoria. In 1848 Mr. Swords joined the staff of The Argus , but left it to establish the Wahgunyah Watchman at Rutherglen.

Later he founded the Bacchus Marsh Guardian at Ballan, and in January, 1874, the first issue of the Dandenong Advertiser appeared. The business passed into the hands of his sons, the late Messrs. H. F. and F. W. Swords, and since their deaths, in 1923, the paper was conducted by Mr James W. Swords, who was assisted by two brothers, Messrs. H. F. and R. R. Swords. They discontinued in 1959.

What are the ingredients that make-up the receipe of a good local community newspaper?

The purpose of this 60-page booklet is to trace the origins of the newspapers and people who have contributed to the Melbourne Observer and Local Paper titles that are published in print and online by Local Media Pty Ltd in the 2020s.

We are not pretending to have a formal association with all the mastheads and people listed. But we do unashamedly admit to adopting their best ideas.

Local Media Pty Ltd is committed to producing family-friendly local papers that celebrate the 150 years of local press traditions in the areas where we operate.

We acknowledge the colourful characters from our Melbourne Observer heritage, including publishers Gordon Barton, Maxwell Newton and Peter Isaacson. Each with strengths, each with weaknesses.

Our Future

We offer a nod of respect to Christopher Crisp of the Bacchus Marsh Express (est. 1866).

We salute the resourcefulness of characters like Andrew Ross of The Evelyn Observer (est. 1873).

We acknowledge the influence of the Mott family whose five-generation dynasty commenced with George Mott, who landed in Melbourne in 1853, starting work on The Argus as the first step in an extraordinary story.

We look back at the pioneers like Herbert Davies of the Eltham and Whittlesea Shires Advertiser, John and Nell Bennett of the Mountain District Free Press, and William Axford (and his 14 successors) at the Lilydale and Yarra Valley Express.

Others to pave the way for our journey include Tom Dignam of The Yea Chronicle, the Broadglen partners, brave independents like the Hatwells of Waverley, and characters such as Ken Heyes at Progress Press.

This booklet does not attempt to be a comprehensive history of the many titles that amalgamate to constitute our heritage.

Their histories, often through extraordinarily difficult chaptersfinancially, logistically, personally - give us the courage to contine our mission to produce independent community newspapers, without fear or favour.

We acknowledge our imperfections. Along our own half-century, we have made our own business stumbles, but regrouped to continue.

We have embraced change. We were the second newspaper in the world to try desktop publishing. We were early converts to colour presentation. We started publishing on the internet in the late 1990s.

We expect that our journey, and the journey of the people who follow us, will continue with the wholesome traditions of service to readers and clients, that we have tried to identify in this booklet.

Always trying new ideas: second newspaper in the world to try Aldus Pagemaker desktop publishing in 1985.

3AK ... 13

3AW ... 3, 4

3UZ ... 14

ABC-TV ... 23

ABC Publishing Co. ... 28

Aborigines ... 17

Acton, Prue ... 11

Adam, Justice ... 24

Adelaide ... 3, 17, 22

Advertiser, The ... 3, 4, 36, 38, 39, 40

Advocate, The ... 9

Age, The ... 8, 14, 17, 21, 29

Albury ... 35, 38

Alcoholics Anonymous ... 31

Alexander, C.T. ... 50

Alexandra ... 44

Alexandra Newspapers Pty Ltd ... 44

Alliance Acceptance ... 32

Allsport Weekly ... 32, 33

Alphington ... 38

America ... 13, 30, 31, 42

Anderson, Justice ... 27

Anderson, Sir Donald ... 14

Anderson’s Creek ... 38

Ansett Airlines ... 20

Ansett, Sir Reginald ... 28

ANZ Bank ... 32

ANZAC Day ... 12

Apartheid ... 22

Apps, W.G., and Sons ... 40

Argus, The ... 35, 39, 40, 51, 52

Armadale ... 44

Armsden, Alan ... 31

Armstrong, George Philip ... 39, 44

Arthurs Creek ... 39

ASIO ... 22

Askin, Sir Robin... 8, 31

ATV-0 ... 13

Australia ... 13, 14, 30, 31, 34, 45, 49

Australia Media Hall of Fame ... 45

Australia Party ... 10, 15, 18, 21

Australian, The ... 23, 24, 28, 30, 31

Australian Democrats ... 36

Australian Financial Review, The ... 23

Australian Journalists’ Association ... 39

Australain Labor Party ... 36

Australian Reform Movement ... 21

Avoca Mail ... 3, 48

Axford, William ... 43, 52

Bacchus Marsh ... 45, 47

Bacchus Marsh Advertiser ... 45

Bacchus Marsh Express ... 3, 45, 52

Bacchus Marsh Guardian ... 51

Bacon, Wendy ... 8

Bahamas ... 30

Index

Bairnsdale ... 18 Baker, Fred ... 36 Ballan ... 45, 51 Ballarat News ... 47 Banerham, C.M. ... 40 Bank of New South Wales ... 28 Bankruptcy ... 26 Banks, Judy ... 13 Banyule, City of ... 2, 36 Barndana Pty Ltd 7 Barton, Basil ... 18 Barton, Cindie (Lucinda) ... 21 Barton, Geoffrey ... 21 Barton, George ... 18 Barton, Gordon ... 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 52

Barton, Kitty (Antoinette) ... 18 Barton, Vonnie ... 21 Basic Inudstries Group ... 24 Bass Strait ... 18 Bath, W.J. ... 51 Bayside, City of ... 2, 50 Bear, L.D. ... 42 Beard, T.W. ... 38 Beaton, Peter ... 39 ‘Beaufort’ bomber ... 18 Beckett, Richard ... 9 Beecher, Eric ... 50 Beechworth ... 35 Bega News ... 24 Beitzel, Harry ... 5, 6, 24 Beitzel, Vic ... 14 Belgrave ... 41, 42 Belvedere Motor Lodge ... 32, 33 Bendigo ... 39 Bennett, John ... 41, 42, 52 Bennett, Eleanor ... 41, 42, 52 Berrima ... 30 Berry, Anthony ... 13 Berry, Hazel ... 13 Berwick ... 50 Berwick Shire ... 41 Big Philou ... 14

Bjelke-Peterson, Sir Joh ... 8 Black Rock News ... 50 Black Saturday ... 4, 44 Blackwood ... 45 Blue Mountains ... 18 Boardman, Eric ... 45

Bolte, Sir Henry ... 8, 11, 12 Border Mail ... 35 Border Morning Mail ... 35 Border Post ... 35 Bordertown ... 35

Boroondara, City of ... 2, 50

Bowen, Kaylene ... 41 Box Hill Reporter ... 42 Bradley, Arthur ... 24 Bradley, Jack ... 24 Bradley, Rob ... 36 Brady, Philip ... 3 Brain and Brown ... 5 Brennan, Niall ... 9, 10, 13

Briar Hill Timber and Trading ... 40 Brighton ... 34, 50

Brighton Southern Cross ... 50

Brimbank, City of ... 2, 45

Brimbank Messenger ... 45

Brindley, Adele ... 40

Brindley, Arthur ... 40

Brindley, Dale ... 40 Brisbane ... 3, 17, 24, 27, 28

Broadford ... 3, 44

Broadford Road Board ... 44

Broadglen Publishing Co. ... 45, 47, 52

Broadmeadows ... 47

Broadmeadows Council ... 47

Broadmeadows and Keilor Reporter ... 47

Broadmeadows Observer ... 45, 47

Broadside ... 9 Bronwell, Thomas ... 43 Brook, John ... 31 Browne, Frank ... 28 Brunswick ... 47

Buchanan, William Tennant ... 41, 42

Bulleen, Shire ... 43 Burchett, Wilfred ... 14 Burns Philp ... 18 Burwood ... 5 Buxton ... 44

Cain, John ... 36

Caine, Michael ... 13

Cairns, Dr Jim ... 8, 11, 22

Caledonia ... 38

Caltex ... 6

Canberra ... 10, 24, 25

Canberra Post ... 30

Canberra Times ... 10, 18, 25, 26

Canberra Weekly ... 3

Cannon, Jack ... 29

Cannon, Michael ... 8. 9, 11, 13, 14, 21

Cardinia, Shire of ... 2, 51

Carnegie Courier ... 50

Carlton ... 11

Casey, City of ... 2, 51

Castlemaine ... 35

Cato, Nancy ... 14

Caulfield Advertiser ... 50

Channel 31 ... 3

Charleson, Alf ... 20

Charlton ... 40

Charlton Tribune ... 40

Charnock, Allegra Haidee ... 35

Cheltenham ... 11, 29, 47, 50, 51

Chernov, Alex ... 32, 33

Childs, Kevin ... 23

Chiltern ... 35

China ... 13, 14

Church of England ... 31

Cleary, Terrence ... 6

Clifton Hill ... 34

Co-Operative Farmers and Graziers Direct Meat Supply Ltd ... 32, 33

Cobber Comix ... 6

Coburg ... 47

Coburg Courier ... 47

Coleman Kingsway Traders’ Association ... 49

Collingwood ... 11, 17

Collingwood Observer ... 35

Commer trucks ... 20

Commissioner for Taxation ... 26

Commonwealth Bank ... 47

Communists ... 14, 22

Connecticut ... 30

Constitution ... 20

Consumer Affairs ... 26

Coolgardie ... 35

Costigan, Michael ... 9, 14

Country Press ... 39

Court, Sir Charles ... 8

COVID-19 ... 4, 50

Coward, Noel ... 13

Coward, Margo ... 41

Cramer, Richard Roland ... 44

Cranbourne ... 50

Cranbourne, Berwick and Oakleigh Advocate ... 51

Cranbourne Sun ... 51

Crawford, William, Jnr ... 51

Creswick ... 34

Crew, John ... 21, 23

Crisp, Christopher ... 3, 45, 52

Crisp, Grace ... 3

Crocker, Barry ... 13

Crown Casino ... 11

Croydon ... 41

Croydon City News ... 3, 43

Croydon Mail ... 43

Croydon, Ringwood and Mountain District Post ... 41

Cumberland Newspapers ... 41

Custodian Nominees ... 32

Dandenong ... 50

Dandenong Advertiser ... 41, 51

Dandenong Journal ... 41

Dareton ... 10

Davies, Herbert Arthur ... 39, 40

Dawson, Daryl, QC ... 25 DC-3 ... 5

Daily Mirror ... 31 Daily News and Banner ... 35 Daily Telegraph ... 31

Dandenongs ... 41

Darebin, City of ... 2 Davies, Herbert ... 52

Deakin, Alfred ... 10

Department of Media ... 25

Diamond Creek ... 38

Diamond Creek Wine Saloon ...40

Diamond Valley ... 3, 38

Diamond Valley, Shire of ... 36

Diamond Valley Leader ... 36

Diamond Valley Local ... 36 Diamond Valley Mirror ... 36 Diamond Valley News ... 36, 37, 38

Dickie, Vance ... 11

Dienbienphu ... 14

Digger, The ... 6, 7, 8 Dignam, Edward Leo ... 44 Dignam, Tom ... 44, 52

Dinasel Pty Ltd ... 26 Dobson, Edwin Howard ... 44 Domain Review ... 50 Doncaster ... 34

Doncaster Shoppingtown ... 12, 36 Doncaster and Outer Circle Mirror ... 36 Doncaster Standard ... 36 Doncaster-Templestowe News ... 36 Downes, Michelle ... 25

Downie, Graham ... 26 Drayton ... 30

Drew, Ray ... 12, 14

Duck, Colin ... 29

Dunstan, Don ... 8

Duntroon ... 12

Dutch East Indies ... 18

Eastern Ranges Echo ... 42

East Yarra News ... 36

Eastern Suburbs Mirror ... 36

Eastern Suburbs Permanent Building Society ... 31

Eden Voice ... 24

Edmonds, V.A. ... 40 Edwards, Judge Harry ... 18 Egerton ... 45 Eildon ... 44

Elizabeth Wilthen ... 35

Elliman, George ... 47

Elliott Group ... 43

Elliott’s Post Office Store ... 40

Elsternwick ... 50

Elsternwick Advertiser ... 50

Eltham ... 34, 36, 38, 39, 40, 43

Eltham Hardware Store ... 40

Eltham & Whittlesea Shire Advertiser ... 3, 28, 39, 52

Encel, Sol ... 9 England ... 3, 34, 51

Epping ... 34, 35, 38, 40

Essendon Aerodrome ... 5

Essendon Gazette ... 35, 45

Essendon News ... 47

Europe ... 34

Evans, Kevan ... 47

Evatt, Herbert ‘Doc’ ... 24

Evelyn Observer ... 3, 36, 38, 39, 52

Everingham, Sam ... 18, 20, 21, 22

Fairfax ... 17, 23, 24, 28

Fairfax, Warwick ... 28 Fairfield ... 34

Farrell, Greg ... 20, 21, 22, 23

Farmer, Richard ... 31 Fed, The (book) ... 30 Federal Court ... 25 Federal Government ... 20

Federal Hotel Group ... 21 Federal Standard, The ... 35 Feiffer ... 13

Fenton Publications ... 28

Ferguson, Donald ... 44

Ferguson, Norman Dugald ... 44

Fern Tree Gully News ... 41, 42

Fern Tree Gully Times ... 41, 42

Fernshaw ... 38

‘Ferret, The’ ... 8, 9

Ferretabilia ... 8

Ferris, Peter ... 23

Fitzroy Mercury ... 35 Fiji ... 3

Fisher, Chris ... 51

Fishermans Bend ... 5, 9, 15, 21, 24

Fitzgerald, Alan ... 10, 13

Fitzgerald, Peter ... 27

Fitzgerald, Tom ... 6

Flemington ... 35

Flemington Spectator ... 47

Flinders Island ... 18

Flowerdale ... 4, 36, 44

Flowerdale Station ... 44

Foletta, Ray ... 45

Foldin Industries ... 33

Footscray ... 12

Media - Page 55

Footy Weeek ... 5, 6, 24

Forbes, Janine ... 11

Ford, A. Roy ... 36

Four Corners ... 20

Frank E. Evans ... 13

Frankston ... 50, 51

Frankston, City of ... 2

Frankston Post ... 51

Fraser, Malcolm ... 25

Fredd Bear’s Breakfast A Go-Go ... 13

Free Press ... 41, 42, 52

Free Press Leader ... 41

Furze, H. ... 51

Fyshwick ... 28

Galbally, Frank ... 14

Galvin, Patrick ... 44

Gannon, Phillip ... 50

Gannon, James Vincent ... 44

Garden City ... 9

Gibb, Don ... 14

Giles, Bill ... 51

Gill, Norman Welham ... 42, 43

Gisborne ... 45

Gisborne Gazette ... 47

Gladesville ... 20

Glen Eira, City of ... 2, 50

Glen Gazette ... 49 Glen Iris ... 15

Glenburn ... 44 Glenroy ... 47 Go-Set ... 6, 27 Golding, Stuart ... 22, 23

Good Morning Australia ... 3, 31 Gordon ... 45

Gorton, John ... 21, 27 Goss press ... 9, 12

Graphic Arts ... 27 Grant, Bob ... 45, 47 Grant, Jim ... 30

Grant’s Interest Rate Observer ... 30

Greater Dandenong, City of ... 2

Green, Bill ... 9, 14

Greensborough ... 38, 39, 40

Greensborough Garage ... 40

Greensborough and Diamond Creek Chronicle ... 36

Greer, Germaine ... 14

Gunn, Robyn ... 41

Hafey, Tom ... 11

Hair ... 8

Hamilton ... 35

Hampton News ...50

Hampton Standard ... 50

Hancock, Lang ... 23

Hand, Yvonne ‘Vonnie’ .. 20

Hanford, Bruce ... 14

Hanrahan, Sean ... 14, 36 Harpers restaurant ... 31 Harris, C.T. ... 38 Harris, Robert Charles ... 38 Harrison, Jenny ... 6 Hart, Royce ... 11 Hastings Sun ... 51

Hattwell, James ... 49, 52 Hattwell, Winifred ... 49, 52 Hawke, Bob ... 31 Hawker, Anne and Johnny ... 13 Hawthorn ... 35

Healesville ... 38, 43 Healesville Review ... 43

Healesville, Wandin, Yallock, Yarra Flats, Warrandyte, Ringwood, and Eltham Chronicle ... 43

Hegarty, Patrick ... 42 Heidelberg ... 3, 34, 35, 38, 39, 40 Heidelberg Publishing Co. ... 36 Heidelberg City News ... 36 Heidelberg News ... 36 Heidelberg Voice ... 36 Heidelberger, The ... 36 Henderson, Rupert ... 28 Henderson, T. ... 51 Henderson, Terrence ... 36 Hepworth, John ... 9 Herald & Weekly Times, Ltd ... 17, 29, 50

Herald Gravure ... 12 Herald, The ... 12, 17, 27, 29, 45 Heyes, Ken ... 52 Hickey, Michael Lawrence ...44 Higgins, Hartley ... 35 Hill, Benny ... 13 HMAS Melbourne ... 13 Hoare, Neville ... 42 Hobbs, Lindy ... 14 Hobsons Bay, City of ... 2, 45 Hodges, Ralph ... 42 Holding, Clyde ... 11 Holland ... 18 Homewood, Helen ... 13 Honi Soit ... 18 Holt, Harold ... 8, 21 Hopkins, G.F. ... 51 Hosies pub ... 28 Houldcroft, Alan ... 41 Howard, Bob ... 25 Howson, Peter ... 24 Hume, City of ... 2, 45 Hume Observer ... 45 Hurstbridge ... 18, 36, 38, 40

Hurstbridge Post Office .. 39 HSV-7 ... 12 IBM ... 12

Ideal Store, The ... 40 IMF ... 24

Incorporated Newsagencies Company ... 5, 6

Independent Sun ... 23 IPEC ... 5, 10, 12, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24

Iron Outlaw ... 13, 22 Irving, Freda ... 13 Isaacson, Peter ... 15, 26, 36, 50, 52

Italian Job, The ... 13 Italy ... 34 Ivanhoe ... 3, 36, 38 Ivory & Barton ... 20 Ivory, Harry ... 20 Jacks, Paul ... 13 Japan ... 13, 14, 18 Java ... 18 Jellett, Leigh ... 41 Jesaulenko, Alex ... 14

Jobsons Investment Digest ... 22, 23 Johnson, Lyndon ... 21 Jones, John ... 41 Jordan, J. ... 24 Jordan, Jill-Anne ... 41 Kalgoorlie ... 35 Kalgoorlie Miner ... 35 Kangaroo Ground ... 38 Kavllears, Kitty ... 18 Kaye, Justice ... 25 Keilor Messenger ... 45, 47 Kerr, Sir John ... 25 Kew ... 36 Kew Mercury ... 35 Kilmore ... 3, 44 King, Andrew ... 7, 8 Kinglake ... 3, 4, 39, 44

Kinglake West ... 39 Kinglake Progress Association ... 39 Kingston, City of ... 2, 50 Kneebone, Tony ... 41

Knox, City of ... 2, 42

Knox and Mountain District Free Press ... 41

Knox Gazette ... 42

Knox News ... 41, 42

Knox Severance Association ... 42

Knox-Sherbrooke News ... 41, 42

Kommer, Walter ... 28

Konstas, John ... 21, 22 ‘Kooringarama’ ... 40 Koo-Wee-Rup Sun ... 51

Kostezsky, Ilya ... 41

Kyneton ... 45

La Trobe University ... 5

Labor ... 28

Labor 73 ... 6

Labor Government ... 8

Lahiff, Tom ... 13

Laird, Fred ... 36

Lancefield ... 45

Lancefield Mercury ... 45

Land Boomers, The ... 11

Lane, George ... 3, 45

Lang Lang Guardian ... 51

Langlands, Dern ... 15, 32, 33

Lanza, Mario ... 13

Laver, W.A. ... 39

Leader-Budget ... 34, 39

Leader Newspapers ... 3, 4, 35, 36, 39, 41, 42, 43, 45, 47, 49, 50

Leader Publishing Co. ... 36, 39, 40, 44

Lee, David ... 13

Legislative Assembly ... 32

Lemon, R. ... 34

‘Lerwick’ ... 43

Leunig, Michael ... 9, 14

Lewis, Leslie ... 14

Liberal Government ... 8, 25

Liberal Party ... 15, 20, 28, 36

Liberal Reform Group ... 15, 18, 21

Lilydale ... 38, 43

Lilydale, Shire of ... 43

Lilydale and Yarra Valley Express ... 43, 52

Lilydale and Yarra Valley Leader ... 43

Lincoln, Edward ... 43

‘Little Chicago’ ... 17

Little Red Schoolbook ... 27

Littlewoods ... 11

Living Daylights, The ... 7

Local Media Pty Ltd 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 15, 32, 34, 36, 38, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 51, 52

Local Paper, The ... 2, 3, 4, 5, 15, 34, 36, 38, 43, 44, 45, 49, 50, 51, 52

Lockheed ... 30

Loftus-Hills, Neville ... 36

London ... 9, 12, 30, 31, 45

London Diary ... 13

Logie Awards ... 13

Lonergan, Joe ... 47

Long, Ash ... 3, 4, 5, 8, 15, 16, 17, 30, 31, 32, 34, 41, 44, 45, 52

Long, Fleur ... 44

Long, Greg ... 5, 7

Long, Jim ... 5

Long, Marjory ... 5

Los Angeles ... 30

Lougheed, Don ... 12

Lower Plenty ... 40 Lumiere ... 6

Lyon Bros. Motors ... 40 Mac, Gary ... 13

Macarthur & Macleod ... 40 Macedon Ranges ... 45, 47 Madge, Arthur W. ... 41

Mall, The (West Heidelberg) ... 36 Mandrax ... 31

Manningham, City of ... 2 Mansfield, Bruce ... 3

Mansfield’s Melbourne ... 3 Mansfield’s Memories ... 3 Manningham Leader ... 36 Mansfield, Shire of ... 2, 44

Manton, Marion ... 22 Mantovani ... 13

Maribyrnong, City of ... 2, 45 Maroondah Associated Newspapers ... 41 Maroondah, City of ... 2 Marrett, Jim ... 31 Marrickville Holdings ... 31 Marsden, Ian ... 36 Marshall, Lloyd ... 14 Martin, David ... 10, 13 Marysville ... 38, 44 Matthews, Jack ... 12 MaxNews ... 31

Maxwell Newton Country Newspapers Pty Ltd ... 24 McAlpine, Donald ... 25 McAlpine, Greg ... 13 McEwen, ‘Jack’ ... 24 McClenaghan, J. ... 40 McGowan, Keith ... 4 McKenzie, Barry ... 13 McKenzie, David ... 36 McLaren, John ... 13

McMahon, Sir William ... 8, 24 McNab and McNab ... 40 McNamara Brothers ... 20 McQueen, R.L., Rural Supplies ... 40 MCG ... 11

Meadows, Garry ... 12 Media Flash ... 4

Melbourne ... 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 36, 39, 45, 50, 51, 52

Melbourne, City of ... 50 Melbourne Cup ... 12, 14

Melbourne Observer ... 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 15, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 52

Melbourne Press Club ... 28

Melbourne Registry Office ... 20

Melbourne Weekly ... 50

Melton Bacchus Marsh Express-Mail ... 45 Melton ... 45, 46

Melton and Braybrook Advertiser ... 45 Melton, City of ... 2, 45

Melton Express ... 3, 45

Melton Regional Shopping Centre ... 46

Menhennit, Justice ... 26

Menzies, Sir Robert ... 8, 20, 21 Mernda ... 39

Merri-bek, City of ... 2, 45 Michaelidis, Michael ... 15 Midweek Observer ... 25 Mill Park ... 3, 44 Millard, A.E. ... 51

Miller, Harry M. ... 8 Miss Australia ... 25 Miss International ... 11 Mitchell, Shire of ... 2, 4, 44 Moama ... 20 Monash, City of ... 2 Monash Gazette ... 49 Montmorency ... 40 Moonee Valley, City of ... 2, 45 Moonee Valley Gazette ... 45 Moorabbin ... 5, 50 Moorabool, Shire of ... 2, 45 Morang ... 38 Moratorium ... 14 Mordialloc ... 50 Morgan, John ... 36 Morning Herald, The ... 35 Mornington County Herald ... 51 Mornington Peninsula ... 2, 3, 15, 50, 51

Mornington Leader ... 51

Mornington Peninsula Post ... 51

Mornington Standard ... 51

Moruya Examiner ... 24

Mott, Decimus ... 3, 34, 35, 38, 39

Mott family ... 47, 52

Mott, George Henry ... 35, 52

Mott, George Horace ... 34

Mott, Gladys Ada ... 35

Mott, Hamilton ... 35

Mott, Margaret Agnes ... 35

Mott, Robert Reginald ... 35

Mott, Walter Thomas ... 35

Mount Alexander Mail ... 35 Mount Dandenong Advertiser ... 43

Mountain Tourist ... 41, 42

Mountaineer ... 41, 42

Muggeridge, Malcolm ... 13

Mulgrave ... 50

Mulgrave Mercury ... 49

Munster, George ... 6

Murdoch Electrical ... 12

Murdoch, Rupert ... 4, 10, 12, 14, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 41

Murray River ... 35

Murrindindi, Shire of ... 2, 4, 43

Myrniong ... 45

Nagambie ... 3, 44

Nankervis, Ian ... 45

Narbethong ... 44

Nation ... 6, 9

Nation Review ... 5, 7, 8, 13, 14

Neville, Richard ... 8

Nesbitt, Charlie ... 20

New Footscray Motors .. 12

New Free Press ... 41

New South Wales ... 8, 21, 28, 30, 31, 35

New Statesman ... 9, 10, 13

New York ... 30

New York Post ... 30, 31

New York Times Books ... 30 New Zealand ... 14, 22

News Corporation, 4, 41, 51 News Limited ... 14

News, The (Adelaide) ... 10

News-Pix Weekender ... 3, 45, 47

Newton, Antony ... 30

Newton, Bert ... 3

Newton Comics ... 26

Newton, Mary ... 30

Newton, Maxwell ... 4, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 52

Newton, Olivia ... 30, 31

Newton, Sarah ... 31

Nicolson, Harald Cameron ... 43

Nielsen, Peter ... 41

Night Owl Theatre ... 3

Nightline ... 3

Nightlines (book) ... 3

Nillumbik, Shire of ... 2, 36, 44

North Melbourne ... 5

North-West Edition ... 44

Northcote ... 34, 35, 38, 39, 40, 47

Northcote, City of ... 34

Northcote Budget ... 34

Northcote Examiner ... 34

Northcote Leader ... 34, 39

Northern Times ... 35

Northover, Robin ... 43

Norton, Judith ... 42

Noumea ... 14

NSW Supreme Court ... 18 Oakleigh ... 50

Oakleigh and Fern Tree Gully Times ... 41

Oakley, Barry ... 9 O’Brien, H.J. ... 40 O’Connor, Mike ... 14 O’Donnell, Pat ... 41 Oliver, Thomas ... 43 Olympic Games ... 36 Olszweski, Piotr ... 5-6 Optimus Holdings Pty Ltd ... 24, 25, 26

Optus Local Vision ... 3 Opunkae Times ... 39

Orford, Mr ... 50

Ostram, Albert Charles ... 42, 43 Ostram and Sampson ... 43 Ovens and Murray Advertiser ... 35 Overnighters ... 4 Owen Dixon Chambers ... 32 Oz ... 8

Packer family ... 17 Pan Am building ... 30 Panton Hill ... 39, 400 Papua-New Guinea, 5 Parkinson and Brookes ... 50 Parliament ... 17, 32, 39 Pathfinder ... 50 Payne, Nora ... 14 Pearl, Cyril ... 9, 10, 13 Pearl Harbour ... 18 Pearman, Kevin ... 41 Pearson, Peter ... 14 ‘Peeping Pete’ ... 14 Peninsula ...... see Mornington Peninsula Peninsula Post ... 51 Perth ... 14, 17, 22, 23, 27, 28

Perth Modern School ... 31 Perversi, Frank C. ... 39

Peter Isaacson Publications ... 15 Phillip Island Sun ... 51 Phoenix, The ... 4, 44 Pickwick Press ... 36 Pilot, The ... 42 Plant, Mr ... 34 POL ... 9

Pope Paul ... 21

Popular Motorcycling ... 6

Port Melbourne ... 35

Port Phillip, City of ... 2, 50

Port Moresby ... 18

Portland Guardian ... 51

Postscript (daily) ... 33

Postscript Weekender ... 15, 32, 33 Prahran ... 15

Preston ... 3, 17, 34, 35, 36, 38

Preston Leader ... 34, 35

Preston Post ... 34, 35

Preston Progress ... 35

Preston Record ... 34

Prince Charles ... 13

Prince of Wales ... 13

Printing and Kindred Industries Union ... 24

Progress Press ... 5, 15, 50, 52

Prohibition ... 42

Purcell, Elizabeth Barbara ... 44

Purcell, (Major) Frederick George ... 44

QANTAS ... 30

Queanbeyan ... 24

Queen Elizabeth ... 13

Queensland ... 8

Queenstown ... 39 Rats ... 6

Regal Presss ... 24, 31, 32, 33

Regal Publications ... 26

Regional Edition ... 44

Regional News Gazette ... 47

Registrar in Bankruptcy ... 26

Reo ... 20

Reservoir ... 3, 17, 34

Reservoir Times ... 34, 35

Review, The ... 5, 6, 7, 22, 27, 28

Rex Transport ... 12, 20

Richardson, Rev. A.H. ... 34

Richardson, W. ... 34

Richmond ... 11, 32, 33

Richmond Brewery ... 32

Richmond Magistrates’ Court ... 26

Rinaldi (photographer) ... 25

Ringwood ... 38, 43

Ringwood City News ... 3, 43

Ringwood Mail ... 43

Rivett, Albert ... 10

Rivett, Sir David ... 10

Rivett, Lady Stella (nee Deakin) ... 10

Rivett, Rohan ... 10, 18

Roadswift ... 20

Robertson, Perce ... 47

Robie, Davd ... 14

Robinson, Andrew ... 44

Rogers, Ray ... 400

Rolling Stone ... 6, 7, 8

Romanis, J. ... 26

Romsey Examiner ... 47

Rosanna Diamond Valley News ... 36

Ross, Andrew ... 38, 52

Rossiter, John ... 38

Rouch, C., Timber ... 40

Royal Australian Air Force ... 18

Media - Page 58

Russell, John ... 14

Rutherford, Fysh ... 13

Rutherglen ... 51

Ryan, J.C. ... 51

S & G Rotary Printery ... 5

Salter, Denbeigh ... 13

San Francisco ... 28

Sandridge ... 35

Sandringham Advertiser ... 50

Sartori, Mario ... 7, 9

Sawer, Geoffrey ... 9

Scheyville ... 12

Schintler, Les ... 36

Scoresby ... 41

Scotland ... 34, 43

Scream magazine ... 26

Seymour ... 3, 44

Shaw, John ... 41

Sherbet Fan Club ... 26

Sherbrooke, Shire of ... 41

Shetland Islands ... 43

Shipping Newspapers (Qld) Ltd ... 27, 28

Sibbald, Kaylene ... 41

Singleton, John ... 25

Sleeman, Clarence ... 43

Smart, Leslie ... 32, 33

Smith, B.O., and Co. ... 26 Smith, H.W. ... 39 Smith, K.W. ... 40

Smith Water Supply ... 40 Smith’s Radio Service ... 40 Spectator, London ... 9

Sorell, John ... 25, 27, 28

South Australia ... 8

South and East Bourke Record ... 39

South Eastern Standard NewsPictorial ... 49

South Melbourne Record ... 50

South Yarra ... 24

Southern Cross ... 14, 50

Southern Cross Weekly ... 50

Southern Peninsula Gazette ... 51

Spectator, The (Hamilton) ... 35

Spellbound ... 12

Spigelman, Jim ... 25

St Albans-Deer Park and Outer Western Suburbs Observer ... 47

St Andrews ... 39

St James, Martin ... 12

St John’s, Toorak ... 31

Standard Newspapers ... 29, 47, 50, 51

Stanford ... 30

Staples, Jim ... 18

Stars and Stripes ... 22

State Library of Victoria ... 2, 35, 38 Steed, John ... 13 Steedman, Pete ... 9 Stewart, Michael ... 14 Stock & Land ... 44 Stockland Print ... 5 Stone, John ... 31 Stonnington, City of ... 2, 50 Stott, John ... 50 Strath Creek ... 44 Strathbogie, Shire of ... 2 Streader, Trevor ... 41 Strizic, Mark ... 2 Stuart, Pam ... 41 Student Prince, The ... 13 Sun, London ... 12 Sun-Herald, The ... 17 Sun News-Pictorial, The ... 17, 29 Sunbury ... 45 Sunbury News ... 47 Sunbury Regional News ... 45 Sunday Advertiser ... 3, 46 Sunday Australian ... 14 Sunday Independent ... 23 Sunday News ... 6, 24 Sunday Observance Act ... 17 Sunday Observer ... 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31

Sunday Observer Magazine ... 14 Sunday Observer Travel Service ... 14 Sunday Post ... 10, 15 Sunday Post (Canberra) ... 24 Sunday Press ... 26, 29 Sunday Review ... 5, 8, 9, 22, 23 Sunday Sport ... 6, 24 Sunday Telegraph ... 17 Sunday Times ... 23 Supreme Court ... 24, 25 Surabaya ... 18 Sutch ... 13, 20 Sutton’s ... 13 Swinburne ... 13 Swinstead, Dallas ... 29 Switzerland ... 34 Swords Brothers ... 41 Swords, Frederick Walter ... 51 Swords, Henry Falkiner ... 51 Swords, James Walter ... 51 Swords, R.R. ... 51 Sydney ... 3, 9, 10, 17, 18, 22, 28, 31 Sydney Church of England Grammar School (‘Shore’) ... 18 Sydney Harbour ... 18, 20

Sydney Morning Herald, The ... 15, 21 Sydney University ... 18

Syme, David, & Co. Ltd ... 8, 17, 29

Syme Community Newspapers ... 45, 47 TAA ... 5, 20

Taggerty ... 44 Tanks Corner ... 39 Taranaki (NZ) ... 39 Tarzan ... 28 Tasmania ... 5, 20, 22 Tattersalls ... 11

Tattslotto ... 11 Telegraph newspapers ... 47 Temora ... 24

Templestowe ... 38

Text Publishing ... 50

Thomas, Ken ... 15, 20

Thomas, Martin ... 29

Thomas Nationwide Transport ... 15, 20 Thomastown ... 34, 36 Thompson,. Norman ... 27 Thornton ... 44 Thorunka ... 8

Times, The (London) ... 31 Tjuringa Securities ... 10, 18, 21 Tokyo ... 11

Tomkins, William Henry ... 44 Toorak ... 26, 31 Torch ... 15 T’Other Sider ... 35 Towart Lodge ... 31 Toyrific ... 33

Trait, Eddie ... 50 Truth ... 12, 27 Tuddenham, Des ... 13 Tullamarine Airport ... 5 Turnbull, Noel ... 14

Turner and Wilson ... 50 University of Cambridge ... 28 University of Melbourne ... 5, 39 University of Queensland Press ... 8 UPI ... 27

Upper Yarra ... 38

Upper Yarra Mail ... 3

Valley Voice (Diamond Valley) ... 14, 36

Valley Voice (Lilydale) ... 3, 43

Veitch, Bill ... 14

Victa ... 12

Victoria ... 8, 15, 17, 20, 21, 29, 35, 39, 45, 51

Victorian Associated Newsagents’ Association ... 5, 6, 8, 17

Victorian Football League ... 6, 11

Victorian Media Corporation Pty Ltd ... 3, 30

Video News ... 3, 48

Vietnam ... 8, 13, 14, 15, 18, 21, 22, 27

Villiers, Fred ... 13

Wahgunyah Watchman ... 51

Wainer, Dr Bertram ... 12

Walkley Award ... 27 Wallace, Judy ... 20 Walsh, Kerry ... 14

Walsh, Richard ... 8, 9, 22

Waltons ... 11, 12

Wandin ... 43 Warner, Denis ... 14, 50

Warrandyte ... 39, 43

Watson, Alan ... 17

Warburton ... 3

Warburton Mail ... 43 Watts, Barry ... 7

Waverley City News ... 3, 49 Waverley Gazette ... 49

Waverley Offset Printers ... 5, 15, 49, 52

Webb, Henry S. ... 43

Wells, Geoffrey ... 36

Werribee Advertiser ... 45 West Melbourne ... 7

West Australian, The ... 23 Western Argus ... 35 Western Australia ... 3, 8, 23, 35 Western Express ... 45

Western News ... 45 Western Port ... 3 Western Times ... 45 Westmoreland, General ... 22 Westernport Printing ... 46, 51 Whalley Brothers ... 34 Whalley, John ... 34 Whalley, Robert ... 34 Wharton, Peter ... 14 Wheeler, Sir Frederick ... 31 White’s Corner ... 12 Whitehorse, City of ... 2 Whitington, Don ... 10, 13 Whitlam, Gough ... 7, 8, 24, 25, 36 Whitten, Ted ... 12

Whittlesea ... 2, 3, 34, 38, 39, 44 Whittlesea, City of ... 2, 44 Whittlesea Advertiser ... 35 Whittlesea Butchery ... 40 Whittlesea Chronicle ... 35 Whittlesea Post ... 25, 34, 44 Wilkins, Craig ... 41 Wilkinson, Thomas ... 51 Wilson, Ralph ... 45, 47 Wilton, Connecticut ... 30 Woods, J. ... 24 Wordstar ... 31 Workers Party ... 25 World War I ... 34, 41

World War II ... 18, 40, 43

Wran, Neville ... 35 Wright, E.A. ‘Peter’ ... 23 Wyndham, City of ... 2, 45 Wyndham, Cyril ... 24 Yallock ... 43

Yan Yean ... 38 Yarck ... 44 Yarra, City of ... 2, 50 Yarra Flats ... 38, 43

Yarra Glen ... 3, 44

Yarra Junction ... 3 Yarra Ranges ... 2, 3, 4 Yarra Ranges, Shire of ... 2, 44 Yarra River ... 9

Yarra Ranges, Shire of ... 2, 4 Yarra Valley News ... 43

Yarrambat ... 39 Yea ... 3, 4, 44

Yea Advertiser ... 44 Yea Chronicle ... 3, 39, 44, 52 Yea Telegraph ... 44 Yering ... 38 Young, Ray ... 6 Zacharin, J.D. ... 26 Zorba’s Dance ... 13 Zurich ... 30