Other Notable Australian Printing Presses
Prior to 1820, The Sydney Gazette was the only well established source of news in Australia. However, in 1810 a publication called the Derwent Star appeared but shut down after a mere three issues. The Hobart Town Gazette was founded in 1816 and managed to survive into the 1820s when newspapers began regularly cropping up (Morrison). Both of these two publications were located in Van Diemen's Land, now known as Tasmania. Two other journals that are frequently talked about in relation to Australian print history were the Monitor and the Australian. The leaders of both of these papers throughout the 1820s faced legal persecution for criticizing the government, and their steadfast publication in the face of attacks from the government helped establish Australia's culture of free press in the long term. (O'Malley). The Sydney Herald, the Sydney Times, the Colonist, and the Commercial Journal were all also relevant publications that existed in the 1820-1840 time period.
By 1836, 7800 copies per week from all the different papers were being produced, which at that point in time represented a very healthy industry. Hundreds of books were being printed within the colony, since the growing industry had made it cheaper to print local than to outsource printing to Britain. Later on in the 1850s, when the individual territories all formed legislatures, many politicians were former printers, publishers and newspapermen. However after the economic depression of the 1840s and the gold rush of the 1850s, the landscape of print was almost unrecognizable due to exponential population growth. Nonetheless the history of print in Australia to the present all sits on top of these very few revolutionary presses.