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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-02-29 Daily Xml
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COUNTRY NEWSPAPERS CENTENARY

Mr BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:19): As someone who grew up in the country and then started their professional life working on newspapers, I have always taken a very strong interest in country press in South Australia. I was delighted last week on Thursday night to attend a dinner to celebrate the centenary of country newspapers here in South Australia, and then on Friday to attend the book launch of a very good book called South Australia Through Our Eyes. It is a publication compiled and written by my old colleague, formerly of The Advertiser, Kym Tilbrook, whose own family has a long tradition in rural newspapers in South Australia. His family founded The Northern Argus in Clare in 1869 and had that paper right up until 1996 when they sold it to Rural Press. So they probably could not have found anyone better than Kym Tilbrook to put this book together.

It celebrates the history of all the papers that have come and gone, but in particular the 31 newspapers of South Australia's regions including: The Leader, The Plains Producer, Riverland Weekly, Border Chronicle, The Mid-North Broadcaster, West Coast Sentinel, The Northern Argus, Eyre Peninsula Tribune, The Bunyip, Yorke Peninsula Country Times, The Islander, Coastal Leader, The Loxton News, The Flinders News, The South Eastern Times, The Courier, The Border Watch, The Murray Valley Standard, The Naracoorte Herald, The Pennant, The Border Times, The Transcontinental, Port Lincoln Times, The Recorder, The Murray Pioneer, Roxby Downs Sun, The Southern Argus, Barossa and Light Herald, The Times, The River News and Whyalla News; and also two interstate members, Katherine Times and Barrier Daily Truth in Broken Hill.

The very first paper established in provincial mainland Australia was set up in a tent in Port Lincoln around 1840, and soon after that we saw many papers flourish throughout the state. The Border Watch was established in 1861 by Janet Laurie, a woman who was a real pioneer of newspapers in South Australia. She and her teenage sons established the business with fellow Scot, John Watson, who had a colourful career serving as an editor for 62 years until his death at 91 in 1925.

For a time he held the world record as the longest serving newspaper editor, and I remember as a kid seeing Mount Gambier in the Guinness Book of Records, and that was near to my home town of Glencoe, and was something a bit rare and special. It was actually his son, John R. Watson, who took over from him and continued as editor until 1941 so, by that time, two members of the Watson family had held the editorship for an extraordinary 78 years.

There were some quite colourful editors. In Kapunda in 1860, The Northern Star was printed and George Massey Allen, who was the editor of this paper, made his mark on the mining town. He had 'a wonderfully colourful turn of phrase which often got him into terrible trouble,' according to Kym Tilbrook's book. It says:

In the first weeks of publication, he was taken to the Supreme Court for libel over an article in which he described a visiting Italian Opera as a 'a superlative humbug...(who) should at once amalgamate...with the crocodiles and the singing duck'.

His criticism was not restricted to the Italian opera. He described the Kapunda Institute Committee as having not one 'educated man' on it, and later lampooned the local Magistrate in his reports on local court cases. At one stage he dubbed the Magistrate 'Chief Baron Ball-o-Wax'.

So, quite colourful characters. We are told:

In 1872, The Yorke Peninsula Advertiser and Miners' and Farmers' Journal appeared on the streets of Moonta, publishing twice weekly...

And they were not big fans of politicians in South Australia:

There was uproar in State Parliament with the local MP labelling the newspaper 'utter and pointless rubbish'. On one occasion the paper referred to two MPs—one as a 'sucking land shark' and the other as a 'slimey pig salesman'.

I might say the coverage over the years has been a lot fairer, and I recommend this book to anyone. It is available through Country Press for $33 and they have also provided a copy to the library here at Parliament House. It is a great read. There are lots of photos of the member for Light in there. There is a story about the member for Schubert, saying 'Ivan's irate' because no decision had been made on his future, and he objected to being called a timewaster. So, that story is in there, and for each paper there are about four or five pages of pictures and words to describe the history and capture the events of the past 100 years.

Time expired.

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