2 THE EARLY TASMANIAN PKESS, P:TC. 



Van Diemens Lands progress, and their starved young 

 coq^ses la}^ on the roadside, or were gathered up, and de- 

 cently interred in the vault where the Chief Secretary's re- 

 cords are now stored. 



Of these transient newspaper entei^irises I intend to 

 say no more in this paper. Our chief consideration will be 

 with the more pennanent successes, and we shall attempt to 

 trace the line of journalistic succession, thanks to which 

 Tasmania has been well supplied with news from 1816 to 

 the present day. 



The colony had not been long in existence before the 

 first news-sheet made its appearance. In the early part 

 of 1810, six years after the foundation of Hob art, the Der- 

 went Star and Van Diemeiifi Land Intelliriencer was issued. 

 Governor Collins had brought out with him the type and 

 a ver}' pn'mitive press, in order to be able to print Govern- 

 ment "notices, etc. He handed this stock-in-trade over to 

 Messrs. Barnes and Clark ; the Deputy Surveyor-General 

 was appointed editor, and the paper was kept carefully 

 under the Governor's supervision. The journal, the si^e 

 of half a sheet of foolscap, printed on both sides, was issued 

 fo]'tnightl3\ and cost two shillings a copy. Its contents 

 were chiefly Government announcements, but advertise- 

 ments, shipping news, and other odds and ends, were in- 

 serted if space permitted. 



This first effort was doomed to failure. The popula- 

 tion of the island cannot have been more than a thousand 

 v/hite folks, and of these not more than a sixth could be 

 regarded as constituting the reading public. Hence there 

 was a. very small possible circulation, and even at two shil- 

 lings a copy it would be difficult to meet expenses. Still, 

 the paper struggled on for a few months, but it was a 

 hopeless task, and before the end of the year the venture 

 expired. 



A similar failure was experienced in 1814, when the 

 Van Diemens Land Ga-ette collapsed after nine fortnightly 

 appearances (3). Two years more were to elapse before a 

 paper appeared which surmounted all initial difficulties, 

 and established itself permanently. This was the Liohart 

 Toirn Gazette and Southern Reporter, the first issue of which 

 was made on Saturday, June 1, 1816. It was printed by 

 Andrew Bent, a man to whom great honour is due as the 

 father of the Tasmanian press. Bent was apparently an 

 illiterate man, to whom reading was no easy task. But 

 he possessed just those qualities of keen business insight, 

 dogged perseverance, and ingenuity, which were essential 

 in press enteq^rise of that time. He seems to have come 

 to an an-augement with Lieutenant-Governor Davey, by 



