Tom Lloyd’s 83-year-old eyes twinkle as he suggests it was almost preordained that he would one day run a newspaper on Norfolk Island.
Lloyd, who founded the Norfolk Islander in 1965 with wife Edna (always called ‘Tim’), says his great-great-great-grandfather John Buffett (1798-1891) landed on Pitcairn Island in 1823 and started the Pitcairn Island Register, a manuscript newspaper in the form of a diary of events and happenings.
Pitcairn and Norfolk are 6300km apart – the equivalent of from Sydney to Singapore – but are inextricably linked. Nine of the Bounty mutineers settled on Pitcairn in 1790, and 66 years later Queen Victoria granted Norfolk to the nearly 200 Pitcairners who were struggling to survive on their tiny island. The entire community set sail for Norfolk in May 1856.
Buffett had continued recording events and happenings on Pitcairn until mid-1839 when George Hunn Nobbs, a new arrival in 1828, took on the task. Nobbs, who became the community’s leader, continued the Register until the mass departure for Norfolk.
There, the first printed newspaper was the Norfolk Island Pioneer which began on May 18, 1885 and was printed by Henry Menges, printer from 1880-1920 for the Melanesian Mission. Members of the newly-formed Kingston Club had “resolved to issue a monthly periodical”, but the Pioneer ceased publication in October 1886 when the only compositor refused to print it.
Records suggest no newspaper of any regularity was published on Norfolk again until the 1930s, but from February 1926 the Prime Minister’s Department in Australia issued a daily radio bulletin of about 200 words. It was received on a six-valve radio installed in the office of the Norfolk Administrator and posted on notice boards.
Between 1926 and 1935 Norfolk people agitated about what they saw as shortcomings in how the Australian Government was treating the island. Two newspapers launched in the early thirties appear to have been vehicles for expressing that agitation. They were the Norfolk Island Weekly News (May 17, 1932, to December 9, 1932) and the Norfolk Island Times (February 8, 1933, to October 16, 1935).
The Times “damaged the tourist traffic and held the Territory up to ridicule”, the Administrator said in a letter to the Prime Minister’s Department in 1936. The Commonwealth had already acted, passing legislation in June 1935 to ban the publication of any pamphlet, newspaper or newsletter on Norfolk Island without the express permission of the Australian Administrator. It did this through the Norfolk Island Printers and Newspapers Ordinance, which required a bond of £200 ($400) be paid once approval had been given.
The Norfolk Island Weekly appears to have begun in late 1936 and was printed and published by B. Grubb (nee Quintal) and then continued by A.S. Gazzard in 1937. The Administration published official notices in a ‘Gazette’ section of the newspaper from March 1937 until it ceased publication about 1943.
Max S. Reynolds launched NINE (the Norfolk Island News Edition) on June 10, 1949, which continued until May 4, 1951.
In 1964, Norfolk’s Administrator Roger Nott, suggested to his secretary, ‘Tim’ Lloyd, that “what the island needs is a newspaper”. He knew she had been a court typist in Sydney and that her husband, Tom – a native of Norfolk – had worked as a compositor on daily newspapers in Sydney and Auckland.
The Lloyds agreed and the Norfolk Island Council repealed the restrictive 1935 newspapers law. Tom and Tim obtained a personal bank loan of $10,000 and launched the Norfolk Islander on August 6, 1965, printing 1000 copies for the first issue – the island population was 875 – and selling all copies. The Lloyds settled into a print run of 650, now increased to 1100 for the island’s population of about 2,000.
Tom had bought a Challenge treadle platen as well as a number of fonts of secondhand type, squeezing a cabinet-full of type into the separate laundry of their home. For six days a week, it became the newspaper’s composing room.
Two stainless steel washing tubs that Tim had bought in Sydney were mounted under the windows in the “office”, with a sheet of hardboard placed over them when the laundry was not in use. It was on this sheet of timber that Tom used to place the type cases when he hand-set the advertisements or any commercial printing jobs that had to be composed. When he received an order that would strip his type cases, he sent the copy to a trade house in Sydney and had the order back within a fortnight.
As a fully trained monotype keyboard and caster operator, Tom found it frustrating to hand-set type, but there was one plus: He was able to set by natural light because the cases were positioned under the laundry window. On the weekly washing day, the type cases had to be removed and the office vacated so that the makeshift copper could be lit and the washing tubs serve their original purpose.
When the Lloyds started the Islander, they set out to produce a weekly news sheet with coverage of everyday events. Government of the island was at the stage where views about the responsibilities of Australia for Norfolk Island needed to be determined, Tom said.
Tim would report news from the Administration and the Advisory Council and compile a column of social jottings, while Tom followed up sporting and community representatives for their news, meanwhile keeping production up to date. As the scope of the paper’s reporting expanded, Tom and Tim found it increasingly difficult to maintain an unbiased view.
Competition has been occasional and not always sustained: Ed Howard, an American public relations consultant who had settled on Norfolk, launched the Norfolk Island News on May 26, 1975, but it ceased publication in October 1980 after 80 issues, resuming as an occasional paper with only a few pages about 1991.
Another newspaper was Dem Tull (They Say). Launched by the proprietors of Photopress International in 1982, it employed two New Zealand journalists and ceased publication the following year.
The Lloyds did not generally cover court hearings but they did – at the request of the chief magistrate – publish the verdicts and penalties in both the monthly Court of Petty Sessions and the Supreme Court of Norfolk Island.
In 2007 Tom faced a new court-reporting experience, a murder trial, when modern-day Norfolk had its one and only murder. Sydney woman Janelle Patton, a Norfolk resident for two-and-a-half years, was murdered on March 31, 2002, and a New Zealand chef, Glenn Peter Charles McNeill, was tried and found guilty. As a precaution, Tom showed the judge what he had written before publishing.
Over the years he has not written an editorial every week, but as a young editor, he was “red hot and thought I could change Norfolk Island for the better”. He soon realised he was only one voice among many conflicting voices. “Everybody should get fair say in the newspaper,” he says.
The letters to the editor section is well read and author Colleen McCullough, who lives on the island, has written some “rip-roaring letters” critical of the Australian Government’s handling of Norfolk affairs.
Electricity generation came to the residential area of Norfolk in the mid-1960s with stringent regulations on what electrical appliances could be used. Tom was restricted to a treadle (foot-powered) printing machine, operated like an old-time sewing machine.
In 1979, the Islander’s printery was torched because of “something we had published” that was critical of the Australian Government’s handling of island issues. The building was soon rebuilt and an offset press flown in.
Since its treadle days, the Norfolk Islander has progressed through Gestetner, Vertical Miehle V36, Heidelberg platen, Gestetner Offset, AB Dick Offset and Heidelberg Offset equipment. “Now, with the advantage of the computer and electronic plate making, we use Risos,” he says.
The Lloyds sold the newspaper and printing business, Greenways Press, to Jonathan Snell and Derek Gore in March 2005. Snell had started as an apprentice printer at the paper in mid-1986. Gore left the partnership 18 months later, leaving Snell and wife Jo in charge.
‘Tim’ Lloyd died on October 30, 2005, while playing the organ at a church service, but Tom has continued as a reporter and co-editor of the newspaper.
• Rod Kirkpatrick is editor of the Australian Newspaper History Group newsletter. Email him at rkhistory3@bigpond.com