Role of the local newspaper

by John Wells
A few weeks ago this column wrote about the local newspapers that shaped our communities and helped keep them together.
There were also the metropolitan papers that came up on the early trains. The guards would hurl them all out onto the platform, if you got he top one you had a newspaper that was a bit torn before you even got to it.
We got the Weekly Times, the Argus and then the Age when the Argus folded. Also available were the Sun, the Herald in the evenings, the Truth and the Sporting Globe. We didn't ever get them, but the others were important.
Dad had a very large book of clippings from the Weekly Times, relating to every part of farming, from storing spuds to planting barley to building a sledge. It was all there, in simple, down-to-earth farming terms. It was a farmer's newspaper, but it served his whole family.
The Weekly Times had knitting patterns, recipes of their own and recipes sent in by readers – it was a great honour, or felt like it, to see your recipe acknowledged and your name in print.
One of the very best things in the Weekly Times was the several photographic reports on the Switching-on Balls and Factory Balls, Lighting-up Balls, Deb Balls, Rodeos, Hospital Balls, Fancy-dress Balls and country shows. These came from tiny townships all over the state and were received with great excitement locally and great interest elsewhere. It was all very unpretentious and had the sincerity of simplicity. It was not about sophistication or sophistry – it was simple, and it was important.
It might have been Weelabarraback or Wallabeup North – every small town had its moment of glory, right around the state.
Val's father got the Weekly Times every week. It was important. It had the stock prices from the bigger markets, rainfall information and for years there was a short fiction story in it.
He got the Age each day, too, brought by the mailman – they were never called posties back then – and would have to walk to the gate to get them. On many farms, in wet weather, that gate was a long way from the house.
He never got the Sun because "it was a load of rubbish" but Val's great grandmother lived next door and she got it, so Val would go over there to read it.
Many primary school aged children read bits and pieces in the newspapers and magazines and, of course, the comic strips – Mandrake the Magician, Chesty Bond, L'il Abner, Bluey and Curly, Wally and the Major, Curly Wee and Gussie Goose, Dagwood, Ginger Meggs, and all the others.
Val has a vague recollection of a farming newsletter put out by Permewan Wright, she thinks, and she members there was a children's page on the back you find penfriends. They were from Bombala and Heyfield and other faraway, exotic places.
The children's page and club in the newspapers were important and extremely good educationally. Several ladies over the years were Miranda and Corinella. Miranda was in the Weekly Times and Corinella was in The Sun (you could join her club to become a Sunbeamer, winning certificates and small prizes.) There were pictures to colour, simple puzzles – worthwhile supplements to a rural child's education.
Sonia Kits wrote this on her website on 30 April 2013. "I found out some sad news on the weekend. The Corinella colouring competition that has appeared in the Herald-Sun each Saturday morning for the past 90 years, is no more. This made me feel terribly sad. Not just for me, but for the future of kids, creative kids".
I don't know where I would be today without Corinella. As a kid, I wanted to be Corinella! I even tried to get work experience in their office at high school (ok so I was a big kid, I went to a Sunbeamer annual party in my retirement year, I was 15, I'm sharing a lot here).
Whilst I have my dream job now, the door has closed on the fantasy of one day being Corinella! Maybe I need to start a petition…'
I am certain that Sonia spoke for a great many people. There were kids all over Victoria who would have missed that competition and the little certificates you could win by sending in your pictures.
The Argus last appeared on January 19, 1957, after more than a century. It began in June 1846 and was a conservative paper which drifted toward the left in the early 1950s and ran into financial strife. Dad was angry about it, and when it failed to side with the United Kingdom over the Suez crisis, that was the end of it for him.
Someone else (I don't know whom to acknowledge, I'm afraid) wrote "Growing up, we didn't have a lot. Corinella gave me the opportunity to win some fun things. Things that kids with slightly wealthier parents could afford to buy them. Instead, I won those things. I got better at colouring and then when my older sister taught me about 'tone', that's when the winning really started happening. Corinella made me competitive. It made me excited about colouring, and boy did I love colouring. Did I mention, I won a lot? I had at least half a scrapbook filled with paper clippings of all my wins."
"When my sister handed down the news, she looked at her husband and said "Corinella's the reason we were having kids".
"It's the end of an era. Nothing ever lasts… and I don't want to believe a word of it. I am thankful Corinella was there for me. I had something to look forward to each week. And when there was a delivery, I was ecstatic! It has definitely made me who I am today, just ask my mail guy at work."
This was to be all about the Weekly Times, still going strong and an admirable publication fulfilling a vital role no-one else fills, but I have, again, wandered way off the track. Sorry about that. And I have not even mentioned those local heroes – Ron Bond and 'Madelia Burko' on 3UL.