If this newspaper provides answers to those questions, you can now access them on Trove at https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/?type=newspapers.
On August 16, 2022 I contributed an article to this newspaper entitled ‘Deniliquin’s Missing History’.
It explained Trove and announced the establishment of the Pastoral Times Digitisation Committee convened by Val Hardman, president of the Deniliquin Genealogy Society.
The purpose of the committee was to digitise the Pastoral Times for Trove.
The committee included representatives of the Deniliquin Genealogy Society, Echuca-Moama Family History Group, Deniliquin Historical Society, as well as Peter Papandriopoulos of the Edward River Library and Garry Baker, a former managing editor of the Pastoral Times.
I liaised with the National Library of Australia on behalf of the committee.
I was born in Deniliquin but have resided in close proximity to the National Library in Canberra since 1967.
Our task is complete.
The committee raised about $63,000 and the National Library of Australia has recently provided access to the Pastoral Times up to 1963 - a remarkable run of almost 105 years from May 1859 to March 1963.
Trove is a collaboration between the National Library of Australia and hundreds of collecting organisations across Australia.
The Trove website is free and available online all day, every day.
The magic of Trove is that you search online by inserting a key word or phrase, rather than search through page after page looking for information about the person or event of interest, the equivalent of looking for a needle in a haystack.
If those interested are not comfortable searching the Trove website for access to the Pastoral Times, they can obtain assistance by booking an appointment at the Edward River Library.
Alternatively, they could visit the library on a Friday between 10.30am and 1pm and a member of the Deniliquin Genealogy Society could help.
There have been at least seven newspapers published in Deniliquin.
The Pastoral Times occupies a unique status: It was the first to be published on May 26, 1859 and continues to this day.
Most of the others, in due course, were acquired by the Pastoral Times.
Two of the other newspapers were titled The Independent.
Copies of the first The Independent are also are accessible on Trove, for 35 years in the 46 year period from 1901 to 1946.
It is now possible for those 35 years to compare the coverage of events in the Pastoral Times and The Independent.
It is to be expected that the cricket scores will be the same in each paper, but the interpretation of political events, not so much.
Peoples’ views about The Australian, The Age and the Herald Sun are often as entrenched as they are about Collingwood and Geelong, just to mention a couple of teams.
I compared the reporting of a political event in which my grandfather, John H Henderson, participated.
On October 26, 1929, 135 delegates of the Country Party (predecessor of The Nationals) met in Moulamein to select a candidate or candidates to contest the NSW state election in 1930.
There were three candidates, and the party constitution did not favour pre-selections to choose a single candidate.
My grandfather and other delegates from the Deniliquin district seemed desperate to ensure that ‘their’ Deniliquin candidate, the then 36 year-old Joe Lawson, remain in the field.
The outcome was that all three candidates were endorsed.
Although one candidate withdrew, the splitting of the vote between two Country Party candidates enabled the Labor candidate, Alderman Jack Donovan of Deniliquin, to win the seat by 121 votes at the election in October 1930.
The Independent report of the battle to retain all three candidates at the meeting of delegates in Moulamein stated that “led by Mr J H Henderson, of Warragoon, they put up a splendid fight, one that will live in the political history of the Murray for many a day to come. … [With] ding-dong fighting, hammer-and-tongs debating, and truth and fairness on our side turned what looked like certain defeat into a glorious victory”.
By way of contrast, the report of this meeting in the Pastoral Times was much more balanced and matter of fact, with several references to delegates who flagged the risks of running multiple candidates.
It is risky to generalise from a single event, but if the hyperbole of The Independent and the sobriety of the Pastoral Times reporting of the Country Party delegates meeting in October 1929 was typical, it is not difficult to understand why The Independent eventually folded, and the Pastoral Times continues to this day.
