Proudly telling Tasmania’s stories for 165 YEARS

On July 5, 1854 — exactly 165 years ago today oday — the first edition of the Mercury hit the streets and was eagerly read by citizens in a thriving population of 23,000. John Davies, founder ounder of what was then called the he e Hobarton Mercury ury, pledged to do “all the good we can” for his readers. “We are the servants of one master — the public,” he declared in the first editorial. With h that commitment the Mercury ury y thrived and has been the cornerstone for trusted news since. It has been breaking the news through fires, flood, depressions and wars. It has celebrated success, mourned tragedy and held those in power to account. Today we celebrate our place in the community and look back on our amazing heritage. We look forward to the next 165 years with the commitment that we will do all we can to serve our readers.

EXACTLY 165 years ago today — on July 5, 1854 — Hobart is Australia’s third largest town. It has been just half a century since Europeans settled on the beautiful lands of the Muwinina people, and already 23,000 have made their home here — and constructed 4000 buildings, two-thirds of which are permanent structures of stone or brick.

This 19th century Hobart Town is a place that will soon be described by visiting American author Mark Twain as “the neatest town that the sun shines on”.

“In Hobart all the aspects are tidy and all a comfort to the eye,” Twain will write during his tour of Australia in 1895.

“It sits on low hills that slope to the harbour … while back of

the town rise highlands that are clothed in woodland loveliness, and over the way is that noble mountain, Wellington, a stately bulk, a most majestic pile.

“How beautiful is the whole region, for form, and grouping, and opulence, and freshness of foliage, and variety of colour, and grace and shapeliness of the hills, the capes, the promontories; and then, the splendour of the sunlight, the dim rich distances, the charm of the water glimpses!”

This, then, was a Hobart that would be familiar to any of us today.

And yet it’s a different story when you take a closer look. While convict transportation had ended a year previously, work parties were still formed in the streets. Drunks and prostitutes watched cockfights held in the rough bars near Hunter Street on the waterfront. And in the rougher areas down near the rivulet in the Wapping District there are regular outbreaks of cholera and typhoid.

This is also a town served by 10 local newspapers — a publication-to-population ratio that would be equivalent to 100 today.

And yet on this crisp midwinter morning, Wednesday, July 5, 1854, another one is added to that selection: the Hobarton Mercury.

Its founder was John Davies, a former journalist and convict turned NSW police officer who saw a need in Hobart for an independent publication — one not tied like most of the others to political parties or certain partisan causes.

The editorial in that very first four-page issue of the biweekly Mercury ( sold for three pence a copy) laid out the vision Davies had for his newspaper in this community: “We desire, To do all the good we can. We are the servants of one master — the public.

It is our desire to serve faithfully, to benefit, and to be benefitted. With this, we introduce the Mercury to our readers.”

As the newspaper grew — becoming a tri-weekly in 1855 and then a daily from 1857 — Davies saw parallels between the growth of his newspaper and that of Hobart, and what was — after 1856 — Tasmania.

And as a man well known around town for not being afraid to settle scores with a fight, he also built this attitude into his newspaper’s DNA.

There have now been 21 editors of the Mercury. (The sixth – an Irishman — had a contract that banned him from having a drink. He was sacked after just a few months.) Every one of these editors has been keenly aware of the values that Davies be

lieved this masthead should stand for, most prominently the strong leadership role the Mer

cury should play in its community.

But of course our newspaper also conveys the news. And it is on our pages that generations of Tasmanians have read about what have been the most astounding 165 years in human history so far.

The Mercury was just five months old when readers learned on December 6 of a riot at Ballarat three days earlier involving gold miners, troops and police — an incident we now know as the Eureka Stockade.

The Mercury had been around almost 50 years when American brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright completed history’s first powered flight.

Just 63 years later, Tasmanians woke to the headline ANOTHER WORLD as Neil Armstrong stepped from Apollo 11 and set foot on the moon.

When the Mercury was launched, the Anzac Landings at Gallipoli were still six decades into the future (“AUSTRALIANS IN ACTION,” the Mercury of Friday, April 30, 1915 proclaimed). Three and a half terrible years after that headline, a crowd gathered outside the Mercury building on Macquarie Street to hear the news that the Armistice to end the War that was supposed to end them all had been signed.

It was through the Mercury that Tasmanians read in 1939 that BRITAIN IS AT WAR, in 1967 the horrific FIRE DEATH TOLL, in 1975 that our BRIDGE IS GONE, and in 1989 that our State Parliament would boast FIVE GREENS!

These are just six headlines from the tens of thousands we have published since that first edition rolled off the American Columbian lever-action printing press on the evening of July 4 1854. These headlines have chronicled the story of our proud island state, and the world in which we live.

Like you, we can only dream of what stories the Mercury’s headlines will tell over the next 165 years.

But whatever changes, Tasmanians can be sure that one thing never will: that the Mercury will be there.

We are confident in this statement because, to quote Mark Twain again, “the reports of our death are greatly exaggerated”.

After a year of huge growth, we now have more digital subscribers than we do home delivery print customers. At least 80,000 people still read us in print every single day — while one in every two Tasmanians get news from our website.

We believe this success is due to another thing that has never changed: that our dedicated Tasmanian team comes to work every day determined to do all the good they can in serving this community.

That means that for every one of the 60,265 days since that first Mercury hit the streets, this masthead has been for you.