About Illawarra Mercury

Illawarra Mercury

Overview

The Illawarra Mercury is a daily tabloid newspaper serving the Illawarra region of New South Wales, anchored in the coastal city of Wollongong. Published since 1855, it is one of Australia's oldest newspapers and the second-oldest regional newspaper in New South Wales. It has appeared daily since December 1949 and has had no local daily competition since the 1960s. Owned by Australian Community Media (ACM), it is editorially independent and known for its deep roots in the Illawarra community. Its headquarters are at the AHM Building, 77 Market Street, Wollongong, and its ISSN is 1443-900X. Its official website is illawarramercury.com.au (Wikipedia lists this domain; the website field is left empty here as it was not load-verified for this draft).

The paper serves a region stretching from Helensburgh in the north to Kiama in the south, covering a population shaped by steel, coal, the port, the University of Wollongong, and a growing services economy. In 2025 the paper marked its 170th anniversary, celebrated with a photographic exhibition at Wollongong Library in partnership with Wollongong City Libraries.

History

The Illawarra Mercury was founded in October 1855 by Thomas Garrett (1830–1891), who pooled his resources with W. F. Cahill; Cahill left after three months and was replaced in 1856 by Thomas's father John, a Primitive Methodist. The first issue cost sixpence with a print run of just 200 copies. By 1856 the paper had become a six-column broadsheet distributed by express coach to Dapto, Jamberoo, Kiama, and Shoalhaven. From the beginning it was defined by parochialism and localism — a paper of and for the Illawarra.

Involvement in community affairs and politics characterised the paper's proprietors. John Garrett was elected Wollongong's first mayor in 1859, and the editor John Curr became the town's first town clerk; Thomas Garrett himself later entered politics. Thomas took over the paper in 1862 and formed a partnership with Archibald Campbell before selling to Joseph Hart in 1867. Campbell was sole owner from 1883 until his death in 1903 — he was elected Member for Illawarra in 1891 — and his widow Margaret then controlled the paper until Edward Allen of Shellharbour bought it in 1905, improving its news content. Allen was elected Member for Illawarra in 1904, continuing the pattern of proprietor-politicians.

In 1888 the Mercury was a tri-weekly of four pages featuring a weekly serial; by 1901 it appeared twice weekly. It became a daily in December 1949. Fairfax Media became a major shareholder in 1962 and acquired the paper outright in 1969. Fairfax merged with Nine Entertainment in 2018, and Nine sold ACM — including the Mercury — to Antony Catalano and Alex Waislitz in 2019.

The paper's history includes a famous blemish. Under editor Peter Cullen it was jocularly known as The Mockery among Illawarra residents for poor copy editing and frequent typographical errors, becoming a running gag on the ABC's Media Watch when Stuart Littlemore hosted the programme. The paper later rehabilitated its reputation, winning the 2006 PANPA Newspaper of the Year award in the dailies and Sundays 20,000–50,000 circulation category, with judges praising its sections, lift-outs, community engagement, and dependable news base.

Programming and Content

The Illawarra Mercury covers the full range of a regional daily, with local news as its mainstay. Its specialist reporters cover health, education, politics, local government, transport, property, sport, and entertainment — and, in the paper's own account, are now trained to present audio and video as well as text to serve growing online demand. Health-system campaigning has been among the paper's most prominent recent causes, continuing a tradition of community advocacy that stretches back to founder Thomas Garrett and his father John, who campaigned for better roads and reported heavily on the courts.

The paper has often supported Labor at state and federal elections but backed the Liberal Party at the 2011 New South Wales state election; it is linked to neither party. Its editorial stance has historically been somewhat left of centre, with trade unions and striking workers often earning sympathetic coverage during the region's periods of industrial unrest, and it has taken pro-environmental positions against controversial development in the Wollongong area. The paper's journalists have won multiple Walkley Awards, most recently Mario Christodoulou (2008), Nicole Hasham and Laurel-Lee Roderick (2010), and photographer Sylvia Liber (2014).

Sport coverage is strong, reflecting the Illawarra's passionate sporting culture, and the paper is popular in the Sydney metropolitan region for its horse-racing coverage. Weekend editions carry magazines, entertainment guides, and property lift-outs in the standard Australian tabloid format, each page approximately A3 in size.

Coverage and Audience

The Mercury extends from Helensburgh in the north to Kiama in the south, serving Wollongong — New South Wales' third-largest city — and the surrounding Illawarra and Shoalhaven districts. Its readership reflects a region in transformation: once synonymous with the Port Kembla steelworks, established seventy years after the paper's founding, the Illawarra is now marketed as a city of innovation, with the University of Wollongong, IT and financial services firms, advanced manufacturing, trade and logistics, and defence technology companies joining the traditional industrial base. The city is expected to approach half a million residents by 2050.

The paper's longevity — more than 170 years — is presented by its publisher as evidence of commitment, relevance, and value, and of an ability to adapt across generations while retaining reader loyalty. Its audience spans steelworkers and miners, university staff and students, health workers, small business owners, and the growing population of Sydney commuters and sea-changers drawn by the region's coastal lifestyle and relative affordability.

That adaptability has been tested repeatedly. The paper survived the decline of the industries that built its readership, the arrival of television, the internet's destruction of classified advertising, and the consolidation of regional press ownership. Through each disruption it has kept publishing daily — a record few Australian regional papers can match — and its 170th anniversary was as much a celebration of survival as of history. For generations of Illawarra families, the Mercury has been the paper on the kitchen table: the place where engagements were announced, footballers were made heroes, and councils were held to account.

Ownership

The Illawarra Mercury is owned by Australian Community Media, the regional publishing group controlled by Antony Catalano and Alex Waislitz since their 2019 purchase from Nine Entertainment, though the newspaper is editorially independent. Its ownership lineage runs from the Garrett and Campbell families through Edward Allen, then to Fairfax (major shareholder from 1962, owner from 1969), Fairfax Media, Nine Entertainment, and finally ACM.

Under ACM the paper continues to publish daily from its Wollongong headquarters, sharing the group's digital infrastructure and some back-office functions while maintaining its own newsroom and editorial identity.

Digital Presence

The paper's website, illawarramercury.com.au, publishes breaking Illawarra news throughout the day alongside digital editions of the print paper. The site is integrated with ACM's shared digital platforms, with much content behind a subscription paywall. The Mercury is active on social media, where its community campaigns, sport coverage, and breaking news reach readers beyond the print circulation area.

The paper's archive is a treasure of Illawarra history. Wollongong City Libraries' Illawarra Images collection holds photographs documenting the paper's staff, buildings, and presses across the decades — from the old Mercury building around 1900 to the 1967 installation of a new press — and the 170th-anniversary exhibition of 2025–26 drew on this visual record. Digitised historical issues are available through the National Library of Australia's Trove service, making the paper's nineteenth- and twentieth-century reporting searchable for researchers and family historians.