Armidale Express [Newspaper] (1856 - )

On April 5, 1856, The Armidale Express published its first edition. This first edition cost sixpence and was printed on a hand set press which took 27 days to be brought overland from Maitland by printer William Hipgrave and journalist Walter Craigie. The Express, one of Australia’s longest running newspapers, has recorded the growth of Armidale from a scattered gathering of wooden buildings to today’s modern urban centre.

In December 1855, a public meeting was organised in Armidale and a decision taken to seek out interested printers in the metropolis. The following month, two newspapermen from the Maitland Mercury, William Hipgrave and Walter Craigie, signed a Memorandum of Agreement in which they agreed ‘to enter into partnership for the purpose of publishing the Armidale Express and also for the establishment of a General Printing Office as soon as convenient in Armidale’. Hipgrave and Craigie subsequently transported their plant up from Maitland by bullock dray. Loaded with a hand-operated ‘Albion’ printing press (once used for printing the Sydney Empire), the convoy took twenty-seven days to reach its destination and, according to a later edition of the Express, ‘had to cross flooded streams and face dangers and difficulties that would have daunted hearts less stout’.

The first issue of the Armidale Express duly appeared on 5 April 1856. It comprised four small pages and set the tone of excellence which the historian RB Walker has suggested explains its longevity. By March 1857, the Express had its own premises in Beardy Street and a circulation of 600 or 700 copies per issue. This was an extraordinary turnover for a town with a population at that time of less than a thousand people. The newspaper’s remarkable success, however, was due to the virtual monopoly it enjoyed until the early 1860s, when the lack of local competition was eliminated by the arrival of the Tenterfield Chronicle.

As anticipated, the newspaper in its early years championed the liberal cause. Craigie, who was responsible for editing the paper (Hipgrave, meanwhile, took charge of the printing), was a twenty-nine year old Glaswegian Unitarian who had worked for Henry Parkes’s Empire, and was thus more than qualified to meet the needs of Armidale’s ‘liberal element’. Both men made no secret of their political bias, consistently supporting liberal candidates in coming elections and championing the cause of free selectors to the constant displeasure of local squatters. So influential was the newspaper that TG Rusden, a squatter who lost the New England and McLeay seat in the election of 1858, attributed his defeat to the Armidale Express. He immediately offered Craigie £1,000 to establish a rival newspaper in the town, but the latter refused, sparking a series of nasty attacks and accusations on Rusden’s part. Even so, Hipgrave and Craigie, who were forced to sell the newspaper in 1858 before repurchasing it a year later, continued to promote the liberal cause throughout the 1860s. Partly as a result of this patronage, liberal candidates for the seat of New England won every election from June 1858 to the end of 1864. It also led to the establishment in 1865 of a rival newspaper, the Armidale Telegraph, which, according to the then liberal candidate of New England, Robert Forster, was ‘an attempt to crush the proprietors of the existing journal’; namely, Craigie and Hipgrave.

The Telegraph was discontinued in 1872, but by this time the consolidation of the Robertson Land Acts had convinced Craigie and Hipgrave that a more moderate tone was in order. The Express changed in other ways as well. By the 1870s, as each country town in northern New South Wales attained its own newspaper and new technology brought the metropolitan press to the region, the circulation which the Express had previously enjoyed was substantially diminished. As a result, the broad coverage of events which had characterised its pages during the 1860s to accommodate the needs of a diverse readership was replaced by a greater concentration on local events and news. None of this had an adverse effect on the Express, however. In 1883, it was doing well enough for the editors to venture into twice-weekly publication. The liberal humanitarian vision of the Express had never vanished, despite the departure (through mysetrious deaths) of both Hipgrave and Craigie in the 1870s, and over the following two decades it remained committed to the values which had played such an important role in its inception. Thus the Express championed the Protectionist cause during the late-nineteenth century, while its most important rival, the Armidale Chronicle (established in 1872), became a mouthpiece for the Free Trade movement. Feelings on the issue were so intense that some newspapers refused to publish the speeches of political opponents. Consistent with its liberal philosophy, however, the Express never stooped to this practice.

The strength of the Armidale Express was reflected in the fortunes of other local newspapers. While competitors, such as the Telegraph, the New England Free Press, the Armidale Budget, the Argus and the Age, came and went, the Express remained Armidale’s bedrock newspaper. Its closest competitor, the Armidale Chronicle, which survived for more than half a century, was amalgamated with the Express in 1929. The Armidale Newspaper Company published its first issue of the revamped Armidale Express as a tri-weekly on 2 September 1929.

Throughout the twentieth century, the Armidale Express adapted to new technology, replacing the old ‘Albion’ hand press with larger and more productive linotype machines, and later still, with an offset printing press which was introduced the same day that men first walked on the moon. In 1999, a ‘fourth’ edition, the Extra, was established to service Armidale and Uralla with a free weekly newspaper. It won the top prize for journalism at the 2000 Country Press Association Awards. The Express now reaches more than 10,000 readers in Armidale, Uralla, Guyra and Walcha, and despite the arrival of a competitor, the Armidale Independent, in 1992, remains the paper of record for these communities.

Related Bodies:

Armidale Telegraph

Related People:

References: Armidale Express Centenary Supplement (April 1956); RB Walker, ‘Aspects of the Country Press in New South Wales from 1850 to 1900’, Royal Australian Historical Society Journal, vol.50, pt.3 (August 1964); and Brendan O’Keefe, ‘Archaeology of a Country Newspaper: Frank Newton and the Armidale Telegraph’, Armidale and District Historical Society Journal and Proceedings, no.26 (March 1983).