The South Australian
newspaper
The South Australian was a newspaper published in Adelaide, the capital of colonial South Australia from 2 June 1838 to 19 August 1851. Between 1838 and 1844, it was published as The Southern Australian.
History
The Southern Australian
The Southern Australian was founded by the Crown Solicitor, Charles Mann, and James Hurtle Fisher. The printer was Tasmanian Archibald Macdougall and James Allen was the editor; they had offices in Rundle Street, perhaps on Allotment 45 on the north side, towards King William Street.
The newspaper was founded as an opposition to South Australia's first newspaper, the South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register, edited by George Stevenson. As private secretary to Governor John Hindmarsh (as well as holding a number of other government appointments) Stevenson espoused a strong party line in the pages of The Register. He was also notoriously outspoken against those who disagreed with Governor Hindmarsh, and was taken to court many times for libel, and even once was attacked in the street by Robert Torrens in response to his articles. A clear aim of the newspaper was to provide a different perspective to The Register. The new publication incorporated the Government Gazette, a useful source of revenue and guarantee of circulation previously held by The Register.It is needless to shew that up to this time we have had no Free Press in the Colony. It will on all hands be admitted that one Journal devoted to sectional interests in the community, does not realize the idea entertained of a Free Press.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The South Australian” is newspaper. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through South, Australian and newspaper, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q24089910. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1838, 1851 and 1844.
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This entry incorporates text from “The South Australian” 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.