About Warrandyte Diary

Warrandyte Diary

Overview

The Warrandyte Diary is the community newspaper of Warrandyte, the riverside township on the Yarra River about 27 kilometres north-east of Melbourne. It is a monthly newspaper produced mostly by volunteers, financed solely through advertising, and run as a not-for-profit, non-commercial publication — in its own words, guarding its not-for-profit, non-commercial status to remain a true independent voice for the Warrandyte area. It is a member publication of the Community Newspaper Association of Victoria.

The Diary's continuity is a matter of record. It marked its 500th edition in September 2016; its February 2025 edition was number 592; and its podcast readings document monthly editions through November 2025, December 2025, February 2026 and March 2026, read aloud by the paper's own editorial team and volunteers. Few community papers anywhere in Australia can show an unbroken monthly run of that length from a volunteer base.

History

The paper was established in 1970, in the Diary's own account, as a small local newsletter with big aspirations. Warrandyte in that era was a semi-rural village of artists, potters and commuters on Melbourne's fringe, and the newsletter grew with it into a full community newspaper. The Warrandyte Historical Society's record of the paper's early days centres on two figures: Cliff Green — founder, writer, editor, mentor and trustee of the Diary — and the cartoonist Jock Macneish, whose work became part of the paper's identity; both remained living links to the founding era when the Historical Society discussed the Diary's early days in 2016.

The milestones since are documented in the paper's own numbering. The 500th edition appeared in September 2016, an occasion marked in the community; the February 2025 edition was number 592, and the paper passed its 600th edition during 2025 — more than five decades of monthly publication from the same township. In recent years the Diary has also built a companion publication, the WD Bulletin (also styled the Manningham & Nillumbik Bulletin), produced to accompany the Diary and carry news that will not wait until the end of the month; the Bulletin project received Australian Government grant funding through the Australian Communications and Media Authority under the Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund.

Programming and Content

The Diary is a general community newspaper in the classic mould: council and planning news, environment and river stories, schools, sport, arts, history and the small transactions of township life. Its coverage reflects Warrandyte's particular character — a bush township inside metropolitan Melbourne. Recent editions documented in its podcast readings include fire-season preparation and the confusion surrounding the new fire rating system (November 2025), the Victorian Treaty legislation (November 2025), a feature on the Warrandyte Community Facilities Review (December 2025), tennis courts, sport grants, young local artists, education and fire policy, and local history features (2025 editions). Contributors named in recent editions include Sandi Miller and Susan Foreman.

The paper's history coverage is part of its standing: Warrandyte was the site of the first official discovery of gold in Victoria, in 1851, and the township retains the heritage of that era alongside its identity, in the Diary's own words, as a hotbed of artistic and environmental movements. Its stories are written by locals, and since 2024–25 each month's articles have also been read aloud for its podcast, "Reading of the Warrandyte Diary articles", by the editorial team and volunteers — an accessibility practice that turns a print community paper into an audio one.

The Diary's patch straddles two municipalities — the City of Manningham and the Shire of Nillumbik — and its news pages follow both councils, as its companion Bulletin explicitly does for the communities across Manningham and Nillumbik. Bushfire readiness is a recurring subject, as it must be for a township in the Yarra ranges foothills: the November 2025 edition carried fire-season preparation and the confusion over the new fire rating system, and an earlier 2025 edition took up how education should prepare children for fire. Planning, the river environment and the township's community facilities — the subject of a feature on the Warrandyte Community Facilities Review in the December 2025 edition — complete the standing agenda of a paper whose readers are also its neighbours.

Audience and Reach

The Diary serves the communities listed in its own publication material: Warrandyte, North Warrandyte, South Warrandyte, Park Orchards, Wonga Park, Warranwood, North Ringwood, Kangaroo Ground, Research, Eltham, Donvale, Doncaster and Templestowe — the Yarra-side townships and suburbs across the municipalities of Manningham and Nillumbik. Warrandyte township itself has a population of about 8,000, on the Diary's own account. The paper publishes no audited circulation figure and none is claimed here; its reach is the reach of a free, advertising-financed community monthly that has been delivered to its district, in print and now also digitally and as a podcast, for more than fifty years.

Its quality has been recognised inside its own sector. At the Community Newspaper Association of Victoria Awards in 2016 the Diary won Best Feature Story, for "Living with Lyme disease" by Sammi Taylor, and was a finalist for Best History Story, for "Warrandyte in the 1950s" by Bill Hudson-McAuley; at the 2021 CNAV Awards it was a finalist for Best Layout and Design.

Digital Presence

The Diary publishes online at warrandytediary.com.au, where readers can join its mailing list and read the companion WD Bulletin. Its production cycle is monthly and digital-first: a published production schedule for 2023 set out the monthly sequence of advertising and copy deadlines, digital publication, and print availability the following day, and print copies are produced on demand — readers can order a print copy, produced at the Diary's Community Centre office, through the Bulletin's published address. Between monthly editions, the WD Bulletin carries the time-sensitive news of the Manningham and Nillumbik communities at the Diary's own website, giving a monthly paper a continuous news presence. The podcast readings extend each edition further: full monthly editions from November 2025 through March 2026 are available as audio, read by the paper's own team and volunteers, an unusual commitment for a volunteer-run monthly.

Ownership and Organisation

The Warrandyte Diary is an independent, not-for-profit community newspaper, produced mostly by volunteers and financed solely through advertising. It has no proprietor in the commercial sense: its own description stresses that it is non-commercial and independent, and its production is organised through its office at the Warrandyte Community Centre. Its founder, Cliff Green, served the paper as founder, writer, editor, mentor and trustee. The Diary is listed as a member publication of the Community Newspaper Association of Victoria, the state body for community newspapers. Its companion Bulletin's development was supported by Australian Government grant funding administered through the ACMA's Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund — public support directed to exactly this class of small, community-governed publisher.

Contact and Availability

The Warrandyte Diary is published monthly in print and online. Its office is the Diary Office, Community Centre, 168–178 Yarra Street, Warrandyte; its postal address is PO Box 209, Warrandyte VIC 3113, and its telephone number is 9844 0555. General enquiries go to info@warrandytediary.com.au and the editor at editor@warrandytediary.com.au; advertising and accounts are handled by Jo French and design and layout by Elke Schnuetgen, on the paper's published masthead details. Print copies of the companion Bulletin can be ordered for on-demand printing at the Yarra Street office via bulletin@warrandytediary.com.au.