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The Advocate (Tasmania)

newspaper in Burnie, North West and Western Tasmania, Australia

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ7712721 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Advocate is a local newspaper of North-West and Western Tasmania, Australia. It was formerly published under the names The Wellington Times, The Emu Bay Times, and The North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times.

Its readership covers the North West Coast and West Coast of Tasmania, including towns such as Devonport, Burnie, Ulverstone, Penguin, Wynyard, Latrobe, and Smithton.

As of 2021 the newspaper was published by Australian Community Media, located at 39-41 Alexander Street, Burnie, Tasmania.

History

On Wednesday 1 October 1890 Robert Harris and his sons, Robert and Charles published the first issue of The Wellington Times, Burnie's first newspaper. It was named after the county in which Burnie and Emu Bay were located and was first published only on Wednesdays and Saturdays. With a circulation around 2000 its four broadsheet pages cost 1.5 d.

The original Burnie Wellington Times office in 1890 stood on a site in Cattley Street and employed a staff of 10. In 1892 The Wellington Times was made a tri-weekly, appearing on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday and on 2 November 1897, the name was changed to The Emu Bay Times reflecting the area in which it was published. The success of the newspaper encouraged the proprietors to extend operations to Devonport and on 4 January 1899 the tri-weekly The North Western Advocate and Agricultural and Mining Gazette was produced.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Advocate (Tasmania)” as newspaper in Burnie, North West and Western Tasmania, Australia. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2021, 1890, 2000, 1892—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1899-11-13. The account is most persuasive where Advocate, Tasmania and newspaper can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as newspaper in Burnie, North West and Western Tasmania, Australia. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7712721. VIAF identifies the subject as 69150746906516300597. 3 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2021, 1890, 2000 and 1892.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Advocate (Tasmania)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.