For the past 180 years the Geelong Advertiser has been just as constant.Close to 55,000 editions of the Addy have been published since founding editor James Harrison sent his first edition onto the streets on November 21, 1840.The Addy has witnessed and documented history ever since.It was there for the establishment of all Geelong’s pioneering institutions. For the gold rush and the wool boom.
It celebrated when the first Model T Ford rolled off the production line at North Geelong, and saw the screws tightened on the final Falcon engine almost a century later.These pages have recorded triumph and tragedy, from the personal to the global, since before Victoria was a colony or our nation federated. They’ve recorded world wars, terror attacks, natural disasters, political coups, five coronations and the coronavirus.Explorers, bushrangers, pioneers, despots, celebrities and sports stars have all had their stories told in the Geelong Addy. And so have the everyday people of Geelong.Some of them were thrust into the spotlight in extraordinary circumstances, others just wanted to tell the community they’d got engaged, had a child or lost a loved one.Tomorrow — on its 180th birthday — another edition of the Advertiser will roll off the press to document the day’s news and record Geelong’s history.
HUMBLE BEGINNING
JAMES Harrison proudly watched the first edition of the Geelong Advertiser roll off the hand-operated wooden press.He was standing in a small office on Malop St, opposite where Officeworks stands today.It was the afternoon of Saturday, November 21, 1840.The newspaper was a four-pager. True to its name, most of those pages were filled with ads.Harrison, 24, was a compositor and budding journalist from Scotland.
He’d helped print the Port Phillip Advocate and Melbourne Advertiser on that press, but saw potential for a new publication on the other side of the bay.When his boss, John Pascoe Fawkner, upgraded his printing equipment, Harrison took the outdated press to Geelong.Their agreement saw Fawkner installed as proprietor of the Geelong Advertiser until Harrison paid off the £300 he’d promised for the press. The Geelong Harrison moved to had been proclaimed a town just two years earlier.Three quarters of its 400 residents were male, and most of its 100 houses were based near Corio St. Geelong in 1840 had wool stores, a post office and a rudimentary hotel, but no church or public hall.Rather than getting lost on the scrubby bush track that connected it to Melbourne, most of the white settlers who came at that time arrived by boat.But paddle-steamer Aphrasia did not start its passenger service to the town until the year after the Advertiser started operation.Harrison’s newspaper was published at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon in Geelong and available in Melbourne 7am Monday.Issue No. 1 bore the Latin motto Fortis est Veritas — the truth is strong — beneath its masthead.
Most of the advertisements on its front page promoted ship movements, wool trading or banking services. But those who needed cheese, liquor, flour or “gentlemen’s fancy trousers” could also find a trader in the Addy.Below ads offering rewards for information on the disappearance of seven working bullocks and a horse in that maiden edition was a mysterious personal notice.A person identifying themself only as “W, X, Y” wanted a “partner”, and his needs were quite specific.“The partner required must not exceed 18 years of age, must be of gentle temper, fair, but ruddy complexion, with light hair, rather above than below the medium height, slender waist, full upper bust, swan neck, neat foot and ankle, possessed of good musical science, and of a fortune in her own right of £300 per annum, or £1500 of ready CASH,” WXY wrote. Deeper into the publication, Harrison outlined the Advertiser’s creed.“Our course is a straightforward one,” he wrote.“Our columns shall be open to ALL, overawed by NONE. We shall fearlessly EXPOSE all offences against the people and sternly denounce every instance of malversation, whether it be committed by the highest functionary of the state, or by the petty minions of petty powers.”
THE GOLDEN AGE
DESPITE financial difficulties in the early days, Harrison had moved to a new premises on Yarra St and paid his debt to Fawkner within two years. He was now sole proprietor of the Geelong Advertiser.As demand increased he made the paper biweekly, then triweekly.By its ninth birthday in November 1849, the Addy was published six days a week — the format that continues today.Victoria became a colony on July 1, 1851Six days later the Addy broke what arguably remains its greatest scoop.‘GOLD IN THE PYRENEES’ was the headline, but readers had to look hard to find the story. It was buried low on page two.Never the less, the ramifications of the story — written by Addy reporter Alfred Clarke — were profound.
It heralded the start of Victoria’s gold rush.Prospector James Esmond found the gold at Clunes near Ballarat, and took his quartz samples to Geelong for verification by jeweller William Patterson.Clarke saw the rocks for himself at Patterson’s Kardinia St business on the Saturday, and by Monday morning his story was in the Addy.“The long-sought treasure is at last found, Victoria is gold country, and from Geelong goes forth the first glad tidings of the discovery,” the newspaper trumpeted.Patterson, it said, had subjected his discovery to the “most rigid tests” and “pronounced them to be beyond any possibility of doubt pure gold”.“The specimens shown are sufficient to satisfy the most sceptical, whilst the respectability of the discoverer, Mr Esmonds, is a guarantee against the practice of any ‘sham’,” the Advertiser’s emphasised.Further finds at Clunes were confirmed in the following days.Within a fortnight the Addy was declaring “Eureka! We have gold — gold in abundance”.But within months the newspaper’s excitement was tempered by the realisation the gold rush was enticing people away from Geelong.In September the Advertiser said “gold mania has now been raging in Geelong for three weeks”, luring most of the town’s able-bodied workers to Ballarat and Bendigo.“During the last three days, the migration of our townspeople has been quite alarming,” it was opined.“Ordinary occupations are almost universally abandoned.“The people in the streets are either actually starting for the diggings or making preparations for doing so.“GOLD is to be had DIRECTLY; and no one can have the patience to seek it indirectly.“In some suburban villages the male population has almost completely disappeared.”If the workers continued to desert the town, the newspaper threatened to pack its press “in a wheelbarrow” and head to Ballarat.But that wasn’t necessary.In short time, the prosperity made its way south to the port town on Corio Bay.Geelong offered a flatter, quicker route to the goldfields than Melbourne. It’s traders supplied equipment and provisions to the miners. Migrants arrived by boat.The town became the pivot of Western Victoria’s wealth and economic activity, and, as the population of the goldfields swelled, so did Geelong’s.By 1854 — the year of the Eureka rebellion — Geelong had 23,000 residents and stood behind only Sydney and Melbourne as the colony’s third most populous centre.
A COMMUNITY IS BUILT
GEELONG was growing rapidly, with infrastructure and new industries emerging.There no was shortage of news to be reported in James Harrison’s newspaper — after the advertisers filled their columns. A town hall was built on Gheringhap St in 1855, the same year Geelong Grammar School commenced classes. Geelong College opened six years later.
In 1857 Victorian Governor Sir Henry Barkly opened the Geelong-Melbourne rail line by riding a ceremonial return trip to Williamstown.Sadly, the pomp of the occasion was marred by tragedy when locomotives superintendent Henry Walters was killed at Cowies Creek.“He was standing on the engine steadying himself by holding an iron upright or stanchion when the train was close upon the via-duct bridge opposite the Ocean Child (hotel),” the Advertiser reported.“He had turned his head to look back at something for a moment, and did not see how close to the overarching bridge the engine was; his head came violently in contact with a timber beam and he fell off; he fell against the corner, and subsequently the iron door-step of the carriage behind.“The train was instantly stopped, and several medical gentlemen were immediately in attendance; but the case was quite hopeless from the first.”
SOMETHING TO BARRACK FOR
IN 1859 — a year before it reported that the Royal Society of Victoria had sent explorers Robert Burke and William Wills on a bold inland expedition north from Melbourne — the Advertiser reported “an attempt is being made to establish a foot-ball club in Geelong”.Nine days later the newspaper carried its first report of a Geelong match.“The species of inaugural football match which came off on Saturday afternoon, near the Corio Cricket ground, was a ‘great success’ — which means there was plenty of fun, with no end of spills, and just enough of barking of shins to give an extra twinge of excitement to the day’s sport,” the July 25 edition announced.
The Geelong Football Club was born.Like the town — now city — of Geelong, it has endured many ups and downs, and enjoyed the support and scrutiny of the Geelong Advertiser since its earliest days.
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