Sydney Gazette

The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser was the first newspaper printed in Australia, running from 5 March 1803 until 20 October 1842. It was an official publication of the government of New South Wales, authorised by Governor King and printed by George Howe. On 14 October 1824, under the editorship of Robert Howe, it ceased to be censored by the colonial government.

The introductory address, by Howe, was published on the first page in the third column. It read:

ADDRESS

Innumerable as the Obstacles were which threatened to oppose our Undertaking, yet we are happy to affirm that they were not insurmountable, however difficult the task before us.

The newspaper's original editor, typesetter and printer was George Howe, who had been transported to New South Wales for shoplifting in 1800. After Howe's death in 1821, the Gazette was printed by his son, Robert, until he drowned in a boating accident in Port Jackson in 1829.

The business then passed to Robert's co-editor and friend Ralph Mansfield. Mansfield soon left the Gazette, and was replaced by a series of short-term editors including Edward O'Shaughnessy, George Thomas Graham and Horatio Wills, Robert Howe's apprentice and step-brother.

From 1833, the paper was nominally edited by Anne Howe, Robert's widow, but managed by O'Shaughnessy and later William Watt, a ticket of leave convict whom Anne later married. After Watt's banishment to Port Macquarie in 1835, ownership of the Gazette passed to Richard Jones, co-executor to Robert Howe's estate. Jones helped establish Robert Charles Howe, Howe's eldest illegitimate son, as the legal owner.

Howe sold the newspaper in 1841 to Patrick Grant. Its final editor, from 2 August 1842, was Richard Sanderson.

The Gazette was printed alongside government orders, rules and regulations on a small printing press and used type brought to the colony by Governor Phillip in January 1788.

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