Port Phillip Herald

The Herald was a broadsheet newspaper published in Melbourne, Australia from 1840 to 1990.

The Port Phillip Herald was first published as a semi-weekly newspaper on 3 January 1840 from a weatherboard shack in Collins Street. It was the fourth newspaper to start in Melbourne.

The paper took its name from the region it served. Until its establishment as a separate colony in 1851, the area now known as Victoria was a part of New South Wales and it was generally referred to as the Port Phillip district.

Preceding it was the short-lived Melbourne Advertiser which John Pascoe Fawkner first produced on 1 January 1838 as hand-written editions for 10 weeks and then printed for a further 17 weekly issues, the Port Phillip Gazette, and The Port Phillip Patriot and Melbourne Advertiser. But within eighteen months of its inauguration, the Port Phillip Herald had grown to have the largest circulation of all Melbourne papers.

It was founded and published by George Cavenagh (1808–1869). He was born in India, as the youngest son of a Major. He came to Sydney in March 1825 where he worked as a magistrates’ clerk and farmer, before eventually taking on the role editor of the Sydney Gazette in 1836.

Bringing his wife (Jemima Caroline née Smith) and eight children, his staff and machinery to Melbourne, Cavenagh first produced the Port Phillip Herald as free editions. Later copies were to sell for sixpence.

The paper opened with the adopted motto "impartial – but not neutral", which was to run under its masthead for 50 years.

It was edited by William Kerr (1812–1859) who left Cavenagh in 1841 to be editor of the Port Phillip Patriot and Melbourne Advertiser and then on to the Port Phillip Gazette about a decade later.

The editor who followed Kerr at the Port Phillip Herald was Thomas Hamilton Osborne (c. 1805 – 1853) who later became proprietor of The Portland Mercury and Port Fairy Register (originally known as The Portland Mercury and Normanby Advertiser) on 10 January 1844.

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