17/04/2023
♦ Some more detail on the history of The Redland Times ♦
The Redland Times, during its first life, in the 1930s and early 1940s, was an eight-page weekly, which was offered at a price of two pence and carried a banner at the bottom of its masthead reading: “Widely Circulating in the Rich Fruit, Agricultural and Dairying Districts of Southern Moreton Bay and Islands.”
The original newspaper was printed and published by Alfred L. Sabine at the office of The Redland Times, Shore St, Cleveland.
The first issue in the John Oxley Library’s collection is dated November 4, 1931.
It said: “The Times widely circulates throughout the following districts: Cleveland, Cleveland Central, Raby Bay, Redland Bay, Ormiston, Mt. Cotton, Birkdale, Thorneside, Bagden, Wellington Point, Victoria Point, Dunwich, Russell, Lamb, Macleay, and Karragarra islands.”
“The Redland Times was “published every Wednesday morning and catches the early mails for the Main Line, outside districts and Islands”.
The Redland Times was remarkably literary in those days, printing both verse and fiction as well as the local news.
There was certainly a change of emphasis in advertising between 1931 and 1934 when ads for agricultural equipment gradually gave way to ads for movies and consumer products
In 1941, the Times’ day of publication had moved to Thursday.
As 1942 imposed itself, there was more and more attention paid to the war, and numerous mentions of local people who had gone off to fight were found in The Redland Times.
And shortly after that, The Redland Times bowed to wartime shortages and ceased publication for the duration.
Various versions of a Redland-based newspaper came and went through the 1950s and 1960s until the modern The Redland Times started in May 1969.
The first modern The Redland Times came off a printing press in an old tin shed in Shore Street, Cleveland.
May 29, 1969, was the first edition of the newspaper that soon became an institution in the growing Redland Shire.
Ray Collins, a Cleveland printer, Don Robinson, a draughtsman, and Cyril Cooper a foreman at the Wynnum Herald, were the partners and driving force behind the paper.
The previous local paper, The Redland News, had lost its local connections.
Collins, Robinson and Cooper set up business in a tin shed in Shore Street and, with a linotype machine to set the stories and advertisements and Heidelberg press, produced the first Red- land Times on May 29 – as a free newspaper.
Around 4000 copies of the first newspaper were printed and distributed door-to-door, to shops and newsagents in the more populated parts of the shire.
On February 1, 1973, The Redland Times had its second owners.
A partnership of John and Beryce Fowler with John and Val Whitlock took over from the original owners Collins, Robinson and Cooper.
By May 1975, John and Beryce Fowler had taken full ownership of the newspaper and its printing works.
By then, The Redland Times was a paid newspaper with a circulation of around 2650 copies per week.
Technology was soon to make its mark on The Redland Times when it became the first newspaper outside Brisbane to use computerised typesetting.
The first editor of the newly revamped The Redland Times, Roger Plastow, was appointed in 1976 and became an active member of the community.
In October 1979, The Redland Times office in Queen Street, Cleveland, was established.
In the early 1980s, The Redland Times sold up to 10,000 copies weekly.
The newspaper continued under the Fowlers’ ownership until April 1984, when accountant Frank Haly bought it.
Mr Haly’s ownership of the newspaper coincided with a turbulent time for local newspapers in the Redlands.
It was the time when free newspapers began to make inroads into The Times’ position in the market.
At one point, there was the Local News, Wynnum-Redland Herald and the Bayside Bulletin competing in the Redland market with The Times.
In February 1987, The Times was in for another change when Frank Haly sold the newspaper to Rural Press.
t was clear in the early 1990s that the days were numbered for a paid newspaper in a changing community where the new residents had no connection with the past of the Redlands.
It was decided to make The Redland Times a free distribution newspaper and move its publication day to Friday.
In late 2006, Rural Press merged with Fairfax Media, and The Redland Times continued to play a major role in the modern Redland community while still retaining the values of past.
The Redland Times was last published on Friday, June 27, 2014, as it merged with the Bayside Bulletin to become Redland City Bulletin on July 2, 2014.
