 Front page, 12 February 2024 | |
| Type | Dailynewspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Tabloid,Berliner (Weekend Post from 2017) |
| Owner(s) | News Limited |
| Editor | Tyla Harrington |
| Founded | 10 May 1883 |
| Headquarters | Cairns |
| Website | www |
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The Cairns Post is a majorNews Corporationnewspaper inFar North Queensland, Australia, that exclusively serves theCairns area. It has daily coverage on local, state, national and world news, plus a wide range of sections and liftouts covering health, beauty, cars and lifestyle.The Cairns Post is published every weekday and a weekend edition which is calledThe Weekend Post is published on Saturdays.
It is the oldest business in Cairns and has been operating continuously for more than a century.[1][2]
TheCairns Post claims to be dating back to 1882.[3]
The first incarnation of a newspaper calledThe Cairns Post was published first on 10 May 1883 and was founded by the ink manufacturerFrederick Thomas Wimble. The son of an English second-generation ink-maker migrated as a 20-year old for health reasons to Australia. He initially stayed in Melbourne but later moved to Sydney, carrying on with ink manufacturing. In 1883 he moved to Cairns, hoping to get involved in agriculture, but soon went into establishing theCairns Post as a weekly paper appearing Thursdays with offices on Lake Street. From May 1887 forward the paper was published biweekly, appearing Wednesdays and Saturdays.
In the economic depression following theAustralian banking crisis of 1893 Wimble, who soon after his arrival in Cairns was electedalderman and in 1888 became the first member for theelectoral district of Cairns in the Queensland Parliament, lost his fortune. This led also to the end of thePost. Wimble ended also his parliamentary career. He returned to Sydney "with nothing left but my good name". There he had renewed success and regained control of his former company there and published from 1906Wimble's Reminder, which run until 1957. This left theCairns Argus, founded in 1888 byWilliam Graham Henderson, who initially came from Sydney to Cairns to join Wimble, as the sole newspaper in town.[4][5][6]
Today'sPost dates back to 1895 when Edwin "Hoppy" Charles Mollet Draper founded as head ofE. Draper & Co. theMorning Post as a weekly publication. He was born in 1861 to a prominent family inWilliamstown, Victoria. After he bankrupted a small provincial paper he traveled Victoria as an insurance salesman. Later he followed his younger brother Alexander Frederick John "AJ" Draper (b. 1863 in Williamstown, d. 1928 in Cairns) to Cairns. AJ Draper started initially a career with theBank of Australasia which took him through rural Victoria and New South Wales. After being sent toTownsville he moved to Cairns in 1885 where he became involved in numerous business interests and also filled theposition of mayor for several stints between 1891 and 1927. In January 1885 he founded together with WD Hobson theCairns Chronicle which evolved into a "rabid tabloid" style paper. In May 1886 he appointed Edwin as editor of the publication. Later that year libelous remarks led to ahorsewhipping of Edwin Draper by theCairns Post publisher FT Wimble. AJ Draper lost control of the scandal-plaguedChronicle as a consequence of the 1893 economic crisis.[7][8]
Edwin had to give up his position in 1898 due to a “serious illness” and he died in 1901 in Cairns. After his death it was found out, that thePost was actually held in the name of AJ Draper's wife Georgina. In August 1900 the paper became biweekly and four years later it became a daily paper.
In December 1907 the paper becameThe Cairns Morning Post and in July 1909 it was renamedThe Cairns Post. The Drapers were fiercely opposed to the labour movement. This triggered the foundation of theCairns Times in 1900, which was later taken over directly by the unions. After taking over theCairns Argus in 1918 it became a daily newspaper, theDaily Times, which eventually was taken over by thePost in 1935 and incorporated with the weeklyNorthern Herald, which itself was a spun off by thePost in 1913.[9][10]
After the death of AJ Draper in 1928 thePost remained in the hands of the Draper family until 1965, when Queensland Press Ltd bought the company. Queensland Press was also the largest shareholder of the Melbourne based publisherThe Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) which was targeted for a takeover by the media tycoonRupert Murdoch in the course of the big media shake-up of 1986/87, which was enabled by the Australian Federal Government under Prime MinisterBob Hawke to curry favour with the nation's major newspapers and their owners in order to foster its re-election chances in the1987 Australian federal election. In the end, after some major assets of HWT were separated out to Murdoch's rivalRobert Holmes a Court Murdoch acquired Queensland Press in January 1987 via hisfamily company Cruden Investments for $700 million.
The first stage of theCairns Post building on 22-24 Abbott Street with its classical colonnade in the inter-war Academic Classical style was built in 1908 and was designed byHarvey Draper (1869-1921), who was another of the Draper brothers. He was one of the most prolific architect of Cairns in that era. He also designed theAdelaide Steamship Company’s Offices in Cairns (1910), the Jack and Newell Store (1911), the Palace Theatre (1913), the Howard Smith Building (1914), the Cairns Ambulance Station (1921), and St. Saviour's Church (Kuranda, 1915) as well as buildings interstate.
ThePost building initially comprised the left three bays. Five more bays were added in 1924.[11][12]
The paper has been digitised as part of theAustralian Newspapers Digitisation Program of theNational Library of Australia. Digitised copies are freely available online for the periods of 1884 to 1893 and 1909 to 1954.[13][14][15]
16°55′20″S145°46′41″E / 16.92222°S 145.77806°E /-16.92222; 145.77806