Tiser ‘the mouse that roared’

SINCE the first edition of the Ipswich Advertiser rolled off the printing presses in 1978, it has been a trusted and wellloved source of local news for residents that call this great city home.

The Ipswich Advertiser was the brainchild of former Queensland Times employees Bruce and Judy Moulton, as well as Dave Handyside, who felt many of the smaller community centres and sporting clubs across the region were not getting their fair share of print space in the daily newspaper.

The trio envisioned a paper made by locals for locals; a paper where anyone could share their story, no matter how big or how small.

They wanted a product where the local swimming club could print the names of every swimmer, and a space where different community groups could share their activities and meeting times with readers.

Since the sad announcement that the beloved Ipswich Advertiser would stop printing, Dave, along with his former colleague and friend Ross Hallett, a long-time manager of the Ipswich Advertiser, wanted to share the paper’s humble beginnings and some of their favourite anecdotes from over the years.

The Ipswich Advertiser made its print debut in mailboxes across the city on February 15, 1978, with the headline “Ipswich booms with $200m. in projects”.

While the team was optimistic about the future of the paper, many outsiders felt it was doomed to fail.

“There were people out there who didn’t think it would work. The editor of the QT at the time didn’t think it would last. He only gave it six weeks,” Dave said.

“Advertisers also thought we were only a one-off publication, but once they knew it was going to be every week, they were keen to advertise with us.

“We knew we were onto something because community news was being bypassed at the time.

“This was when AAP was selling stories to the provincial newspapers.

“We were getting lots of national and international news that people weren’t interested in.

“People wanted to know when their road was going to be dug up, what was happening in the local schools – all the news that didn’t get touched by the QT.”

Starting a newspaper from scratch is no easy task, but the team that joined the Ipswich Advertiser hit the ground running getting stories, photographs and signing up businesses to advertise.

However, a small mishap almost derailed the first edition.

“We bought a camera and I went out and took most of the photos for the first edition,” Dave said.

“I took the photos to Ron Brett (who quickly became the paper’s photographer) to get them processed a couple of days before print.

“He told me there were no images on the camera because the film hadn’t wound onto the stool.

“That nearly ruined us. “We then had to buy a polaroid camera and race around in a day and have all the photos retaken.”

They succeeded though and the paper was printed on a printing press down on the Gold Coast.

The first edition was letterbox delivered to 18,000 homes, but it quickly became a favourite with residents and businesses who advertised.

Within two years the paper’s distribution was increased to 22,000.

To many in the early days, the Ipswich Advertiser was known as “the mouse that roared”.

According to an excerpt from the 25th anniversary edition of the Ipswich Advertiser, printed March 2003, Bruce and Judy Moulton took complete ownership of the Ipswich Advertiser in 1980.

They then sold the successful enterprise in 1986 to Rural Press.

In 1989, a few years after the sale, Bruce died suddenly.

His beloved newspaper was controlled by Rural Press for 13 years before Australian Provincial Newspapers (APN) acquired the masthead in August 1999.

The paper then came under the umbrella of News Corp in 2016.

Ross Hallett, a long-time manager of the Ipswich Advertiser, said the small team worked “many long hours, day and night” to share the stories that were important to the community, and continued to grow bigger and better.

“We had 16 pages and we built it up from there,” Ross said.

“We contacted all the community groups and sporting clubs and told them whatever they gave us we would print. At that period of time the QT wasn’t doing that.

“We quickly filled it up with community notes and Ron Brett would go and take the photos for us.

“We didn’t even have a journalist at the time. John Gardiner (the paper’s first editor) would come in on a Saturday and sub the paper and lay it out for us.

“We would have a front page story and that would be about it. The rest would be filled up with photos and community notes, and that’s what people liked and they wanted.

“We went from strength to strength, going from 16 pages up to 48 pages, and 70 per cent ads.

“We were making really good money, and were one of the better papers that Rural Press had, because we won a lot of awards over that time.

“We were a real pain in the arse for the QT, which made us really happy.”

As time went by the QT and Ipswich Advertiser formed a harmonious relationship, with the two papers working together to share all the news that was occurring across Ipswich, both the good and the bad, and expanding its readership to more than 40,000 people each week.

Sadly, after 42 wonderful years, the printing presses on the beloved Ipswich Advertiser fell silent, with the final edition coming out earlier this week.

Vale Ipswich Advertiser: February 15, 1978 – June 24, 2020.