History of the New England newspaper press 2 - Early paper rush in New England: have printing press will travel!

EARLY GROWTH: High Street, West Maitland. For a number of decades, Maitland was the Norths largest urban centre.This is the second in a series on the history of the media and especially the newspaper press in New England 

The history of the newspaper press in Northern NSW is entangled with our history.

When the Maitland Mercury, the North’s first great paper and journal of record, was founded in 1843 Maitland was the North’s largest town, a position it would hold for many years. North of the Hunter, the pastoral rush was well underway, but the European population was thinly spread.

Between 1841 and 1859 ten newspapers were established, most failing quickly. Seven of the ten were in the lower Hunter where the European population was concentrated.

Of the remaining three, two would go on to become major Northern newspapers, the Armidale Express (1856) and the Clarence & Richmond Examiner (1859). 

From 1860, there was a rush of newspaper formations across country New South Wales with 47 papers launched between 1860 and 1864. Of these, 35 died in infancy.

This newspaper rush coincided with the early gold rushes. These created new population centers with their own papers such as The Miner (Lambing Flat).

The process of newspaper formation was a little different in Northern NSW. Here the early gold fields were smaller and more ephemeral, too small at that point to support papers. However, they did added population to existing townships as a consequence of new business generated by gold.

This new business came in part from servicing nearby gold fields, in part from increased business from pastoralists and farmers supplying the miners. On the New England, the squatters were sending stock as far south as the Victorian fields, helping lay the basis for later fortunes.

The papers that were created Northern NSW in the decade from 1860 were located not on the gold fields, but in the emerging port towns (the Macleay Herald and Manning Times) and in existing town centers inland or on the lower Hunter.

One feature of the 1860s was the early emergence of competing newspapers in many towns. There were two new starts in Grafton, two in the lower Hunter, adding to existing papers.

This would become a major feature by the end of the nineteenth century. By then, even small centers had two newspapers.

This competition reflected ease of entry: have printing press will travel! It also reflected the commercial and political dynamics holding in particular areas.

I will look at this in my next column.

This post was prepared as a column for the on-line edition of the Armidale Express. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019, here 2020 

History of the New England newspaper press 1 - 1841: Thomas Strode and the Hunter River Gazette

Thomas Strode, 1872. Strode was New England's first pressman. This is the first in a series on the history of the media and especially the newspaper press in New England 

Historian Rod Kirkpatrick chose Country Conscience as the title for his history of the NSW provincial press 1841-1995.

At a time when so many country newspapers have suspended publication, it seems appropriate to tell a little of the rich story of the newspaper press across Northern NSW. Rod’s book title is well chosen.

The first newspaper in Northern NSW, the Hunter River Gazette, came off a little timber hand-operated press in Maitland on 11 December 1841.

With a population of 2,768, Maitland with its nearby river port at Morpeth was the North’s largest town, servicing the rapidly expanding pastoral occupation across the North.

Thomas Strode, the Gazette’s proprietor, had been mechanical superintendent on the Sydney Herald and then co-founder of the Port Phillip Gazette with George Arden.

The Gazette failed, ceasing publication in June 1842. This failure was not due so much to local factors, but to problems with the Port Phillip Gazette that forced Strode to return to Melbourne.

Despite the Gazette’s short life, it illustrates many of the features of our early newspapers.

It began because local merchants and others saw a newspaper as necessary to communicate with customers and advocate local interests. Strode himself was a printer not a journalist, a necessary requirement when skills were scarce; the proprietor had to physically produce the paper. 

Strode also faced multiple challenges in selling advertisements, gaining subscriptions and then producing and distributing the paper. Finally, he saw his role in grand terms, in admonishing the unworthy against temptation, in protecting the underdog and in educating the population.

Mind you, despite these lofty ambitions, Strode was not immune to the temptation to use his columns to pursue personal vendettas, to assert his views!

Maitland was still growing as the Gazette closed. This left a market gap that needed to be filled.

There was a first abortive attempt that failed, but then on 7 January 1843 came the launch of the Maitland Mercury, the North’s first great paper and journal of record.

I say great paper and journal of record advisedly. The Maitland Mercury was the only newspaper in a vast if thinly populated area. It saw its reporting role not just in local terms, but in terms of the broader area it serviced.

It was also very profitable.

This post was prepared as a column for the on-line edition of the Armidale Express. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019, here 2020 

Consolidated posts on the history and changing role of the media in Australia's New England

Frank Walter Vincent Senior on the left, his wife Armidale girl Sarah Jane nee Rampling nursing the child. They met while Frank and brother Henry were helping Frank Newton establish the Armidale Telegraph. Brother Henry met his wife at the same time, another Armidale girl, Sarah Shiels. On 15 April 1876, the two brothers established the Uralla & Walcha Times (later just Uralla Times), with Frank as editor. He and then son Barnes were editors for all but six years of its life, from foundation until the paper's sale to the Armidale Newspaper Company Ltd at the close of 1946.

I have begun a new series for my Armidale Express column on the history of the newspaper press in the broader New England. It seemed a good idea to do so given that we are at a change point where the very survival of the local and regional media seems uncertain. Publication is a little uncertain, but I will in any event publish them here.

To assist me, I have begun the process of consolidating my writing on the New England media. A list of the first 31 posts follows. I will add to the list as I continue the search process.

The posts cover different themes  cover different themes from history through changing roles and the pressures of commercial survival. Necessarily the posts are a little fragmentary, written over a number of years. I have tried to group them in rough thematic order. Later when I have completed the list, I will consolidate.   

• Wednesday, August 06, 2014 History revisited – Lang vs Clark Irving: the battle for Northern self-government begins. Foundation of newspaper press Grafton, newspapers and politics, self-government, 1850s
• Wednesday, October 09, 2013 History revisited - pressed for change. Historical note on printing presses etc
• Wednesday, September 25, 2013 History revisited - turning the page on a new chapter with newspapers. The Armidale Express, formation of the Armidale Telegraph, influence of local politics on paper formation 1850s
• Wednesday, April 04, 2012 Introducing the Vincent printers 
• Wednesday, October 24, 2012 History revisited - a pressing change. Formation of the Armidale Newspaper Co, competition with the dailies
• Monday, July 26, 2010 Formation of the Armidale Newspaper Company
• Wednesday, December 23, 2015 History Revisited - building a New England media empire. Ernest Christian Sommerlad 
• Wednesday, August 13, 2014 History revisited – January 1920. Tamworth Observer’s Victor Thompson re-launches fight for New England new state. On Victor Thompson and the fight for self government
• Wednesday, August 20, 2014, History revisited – Thompson’s separatist fire burns well
• Wednesday, January 20, 2016 History Revisited - how Tamworth's paper became a leader. Early history of the Northern Daily Leader
• Friday, March 14, 2008 History of ABC in Newcastle
• Wednesday, December 11, 2019, Saving the Dorrigo Park, The Vincents, Don Dorrigo Gazette
• Wednesday, December 19, 2018, New England folk takes its place on the stage. Reference to influence of papers in promoting local history 
• Tuesday, November 22, 2011 Belshaw's World - New England’s newspaper history bespeaks change
• Friday, December 26, 2008 More on perceptions, selection and bias in the Australian media
• Saturday, December 27, 2008, Saturday Morning Musings - more on the media. Reflections on the role and history of the regional media
• Saturday, April 11, 2009 The importance of the local press - why it's lost it's way 
• Friday, October 02, 2009 The role of the New England Press - and the need for change
• Tuesday, December 07, 2010 Rural Press, Fairfax and Brian McCarthy. Reflections on the end of an era
• Wednesday, November 23, 2011 APN ceases daily publication of Tweed Daily, Coffs Advocate
• Saturday, August 11, 2012 Fairfax rolls out new web format across its New England papers
• Saturday, November 27, 2010 Social Change in New England 1950-2000 5: end of local media ownership
• Wednesday, December 27, 2006 Newcastle's Information Blackhole. 
• Wednesday, January 03, 2007 Tamworth and the History of Country Music
• Friday, August 10, 2007 The Koori Mail - New England's national indigenous newspaper
• Tuesday, November 25, 2014 ABC cuts - Newcastle loses metro radio status, jobs and local programming
• Friday, December 05, 2014 New England Passings – Remembering Bruce Treloar
• Monday, February 18, 2019 Another blow to the North; Paywalls damage regional reporting - and cohesion - across Northern NSW, the broader New England
• Thursday, May 09, 2019 Antony Catalano's challenge -a possible ten time profit but only if he discovers his papers ' local and regional roots
• Friday, April 17, 2020 Reflections on the suspension of the Armidale Express and other ACM mastheads.

The early Aboriginal peopling of Australia's New England

Neanderthal cousins: Artists reconstruction of a Denisovan girl based on the combination of skeletal and DNA evidence.

In April, I began a sort series of Armidale Express columns on the history of the Aboriginal peopling of New England. Drawn from the introductory course I was running on the history of New England, the columns told in short form the story of the journey to and arrival on the mega-continent now known as Sahul, the spread across Sahul and arrival in New England followed by the challenge of the Last Glacial Maximum.

Aboriginal settlement of Sahul: by 40,000 years ago, the ancestors of Australia's Aboriginal peoples had occupied the entire continent known as Sahul.

In a later series I will carry the story forward through the Holocene and the golden age that came to an end with the arrival of the Europeans in 1788.

I have now posted all the columns to this blog. This post allows you to follow the whole series through from the first post. 

• Wednesday, April 01, 2020 The peopling of New England - the mysterious Denisovans
• Wednesday, April 08, 2020 The peopling of New England - Mysteries of migration
• Wednesday, April 15, 2020 The peopling of New England - Aboriginal peoples' arrival in New England
• Wednesday, April 22, 2020 The Aboriginal peopling of New England - What did Aboriginal life look like in New England 40,000 years ago?
• Wednesday, April 29, 2020 The Aboriginal peopling of New England. How the New England landscape went through dramatic changes
• Wednesday, May 06, 2020 The Aboriginal peopling of New England. Reoccupation following the ending of the Last Glacial Maximum

The Aboriginal peopling of New England. Reoccupation following the ending of the Last Glacial Maximum

Stuart’s Point today, the site of the oldest known Aboriginal occupation in New England following the end of the Last Glacial Maximum This is the sixth and final in a series on the Aboriginal peopling of New England drawn from the introductory course I have been running on New England's history. I will continue the story of the Holocene period in a later series.   

In my last column I discussed the likely impact of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), a cold dry windy period running from around 12,000 to 15,000 years ago, on New England’s Aboriginal peoples.

Faced with persistent drought and temperatures up to 8C below present, New England’s Aboriginal peoples were forced to retreat to refuge areas where food as well as protection from the elements was still available. Whole groups may have been wiped out.

Around 15,000 years ago, the LGM began to ease. From around 12,000 years ago, the period now described as the Holocene began. Average temperatures rose, rainfall increased. Deserts retreated westwards, while plants, animals and humans began to reoccupy the landscape.

This process took time, while its effects varied from place to place.

Down on our coastal strip, sea levels rose by 130 metres rushing inland past the coastline we know today. If you were standing where Kempsey is now, you would be on the coast. Shelters, camping grounds, ceremonial sites and food resources were submerged by the rising waters.

Slowly, the silt laden rivers swollen by higher Tablelands’ rainfall pushed back, joined by sea currents depositing sand, creating the current coastal dunes and backing estuaries.

This process took time. The coast as we know it today finally emerged about 6,000 years ago.

Even before this date, new habitats emerged favourable to human occupation.

In 1975 excavations at Stuarts Point, a very large oyster and cockle midden on the inner barrier north of the present estuary of the Macleay, revealed an occupation date of 9320 ± 160 BP (Before Present). Prior to that result, the earliest coastal date had been 6444 ± 74 BP for the basal levels of the Seelands dig in the Clarence about 12 kilometres northwest of Grafton.

On the Western Slopes and Plains, the earliest certain occupation date we have is much later than the coast, with an uncalibrated age of 5450 ± 100 years BP at Graman near Inverell.

On the Tableland, the earliest certain occupation date that we presently have is an uncalibrated age of 4300 years ago from Bendemeer. However, analysis done by Wendy Beck suggests that the resource base would have allowed targeted visits from at least the start of the Holocene, with permanent settlement possible from perhaps 6,000 years.

It is frustrating that we cannot sketch out the story in more detail. What we can say with a degree of certainty is that New England’s Aboriginal peoples were entering a golden age that would last to European invasion.

I will tell you this story in a later series of columns.

This post was prepared as a column for the on-line edition of the Armidale Express. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019, here 2020