About Augusta Margaret River Mail

Augusta Margaret River Mail

Overview

The Augusta Margaret River Mail is the weekly newspaper of the Shire of Augusta Margaret River in Western Australia's South West, serving the towns of Margaret River and Augusta and the settlements between them — Cowaramup, Gracetown, Prevelly, Witchcliffe, Karridale and Kudardup — in a district known internationally for wine, surf and the forests and caves of the Leeuwin-Naturaliste ridge. Publishing since the mid-1980s, the Mail is the older of the district's two newspapers, and it should not be confused with the Augusta Margaret River Times, the Seven West Media title founded in 2007 with which it competes. The Mail's recent history has been eventful: a Fairfax title that passed to Australian Community Media, it was slated to lose its print edition in 2022 and faced closure in 2023, when Sports Entertainment Network (SEN) bought it and kept the weekly publishing. That the purchase worked is visible in the Shire's own paperwork: council documents record a public notice advertised in the Mail in November 2024, a tender invitation published in it in 2025, and an August 2025 council agenda requiring a speedway program to be published in both the Times and the Mail — the administrative footprint of a newspaper still acting as a paper of record for its district.

History

The Mail began publication around 1986; the State Library of Western Australia's ephemera collection dates material from the paper to about that year, and listings of South West newspapers record the Augusta-Margaret River Mail as running from 1986 to the present. It was not the district's first paper — the Group Settlement Chronicle and Margaret-Augusta Mail had served the group settlement country in the 1920s, and the Margaret River News published from 1931 to 1941 — but it was the first to endure, establishing itself as the shire grew from a dairying and timber district into one of Australia's best-known wine regions. For a period the paper's office sat above the shops of the Leeuwin Reality Arcade on Bussell Highway in Margaret River's main street, a perch recorded by the local historical society's main street walk. The Mail spent its middle decades in the Fairfax stable, as part of the regional portfolio that became Fairfax Regional Media, and passed with that portfolio to Australian Community Media in 2019 when ACM bought Fairfax's former regional and agricultural titles. Under ACM the paper's position weakened with the rest of the regional industry: in 2022 ACM announced that the Augusta-Margaret River Mail, the Bunbury Mail and the Mandurah Mail would become digital-only after the IVE Group's decision to close the Mandurah print site that produced them. Closure followed as the next step: Australian Community Media moved to shut its four remaining Western Australian Mail titles unless buyers were found. In 2023 SEN stepped in, acquiring the Augusta-Margaret River Mail and the Busselton-Dunsborough Mail, and the paper continued.

Programming and Content

The Mail covers the full round of a small shire's life: Augusta Margaret River council meetings, planning disputes in a district where development pressure is constant, the wine and tourism industries, agriculture, the surf culture of the Margaret River coast and the community life of two towns and a scatter of villages nearly forty kilometres apart. Its role as a formal channel for public information is documented across decades. In October 2018 the Shire published censure notices concerning a councillor in both the Mail and the Times, the Mail's notice appearing in its Wednesday edition of 10 October 2018 — the paper's historical publication day. The pattern continues in the current era: a land transaction proposal was advertised in the Mail on 27 November 2024, the Shire's 2025 tender for recreational boating facility works invited responses through a notice published in the Mail, and the council's agenda of 27 August 2025 required the Margaret River Speedway's racing program to be published in the Augusta-Margaret River Times and the Augusta Margaret River Mail in the last two weeks of September — statutory-style advertising placed in the Mail because the district still reads it. The paper has also served as a source beyond its district: academic research into the 2018 Margaret River Pro surfing crisis cited the Mail's reporting on the event's local economic significance, a reminder that in a one-paper-per-town region the local weekly is often the record of first resort.

Audience and Reach

The Mail's audience is the population of the Shire of Augusta Margaret River — a fast-growing community of wine workers, tourism operators, surfers, farmers, retirees and young families spread between Augusta at the mouth of the Blackwood River and the shire's administrative centre at Margaret River. No audited circulation figure for the paper is published by its current owner, and none is claimed here; the paper's reach is better evidenced by behaviour than by numbers. The Shire of Augusta Margaret River continues to place paid public notices and tender invitations in the Mail, as its 2024 and 2025 documents show, which it would have no reason to do for a paper its residents did not receive. The district's second paper, the Times, belongs to Seven West Media; the Mail, under a national sports-media owner, is the independent-voice alternative in a two-paper town market of a kind that has become rare in regional Australia.

Digital Presence

The Mail publishes online at margaretrivermail.com.au, the website it has used through its ACM and SEN eras, carrying local news in digital form alongside the weekly print edition. Its publishing continuity can be traced through third-party records across the ownership change: the Public Interest Journalism Initiative's Australian News Data Report of June 2023 noted ACM's announced sale of two of its remaining four Western Australian titles to Sports Entertainment Network, and Mediaweek's report of the completed acquisition confirmed that the Augusta-Margaret River Mail was one of them and that the weekly publications would continue. Shire documents then carry the story forward — the November 2024 advertisement, the 2025 tender notice and the August 2025 speedway requirement — each recording the Mail as an operating newspaper in the period after the sale. The paper's digital presence is modest beside its metropolitan counterparts, but its print-and-digital combination is explicitly how official sources describe it: industry submissions prepared for a Senate inquiry into media diversity in the early 2020s listed the Augusta Margaret River Mail as a print and digital outlet for the region.

Ownership and Organisation

The Mail is owned by Sports Entertainment Network (SEN), the Melbourne-based sports media company led by chief executive Craig Hutchison, whose business spans radio stations, television production and digital sports content. SEN's interest in the Margaret River region predates the purchase: it operates the SEN Spirit Southwest station on 621 AM in the South West and was preparing a further station based in Margaret River when the acquisition was made. Announcing the purchase of the Mail and the Busselton-Dunsborough Mail from Australian Community Media in 2023, Hutchison said that when the company heard the papers were likely to close, "we couldn't let that happen", pointing to the jobs the acquisition saved and the local presence it gave the network; the sale took effect immediately, with the stated aim of ensuring the continuation of the weekly publications. The Mail thus sits inside a sports broadcaster's regional portfolio — an unusual home for a community weekly, but one that has kept it publishing in print and online while comparable ACM titles elsewhere in Western Australia, such as the Collie Mail, closed. Editorial and advertising operations are local to the district, under SEN's regional umbrella.

Contact and Availability

The Augusta Margaret River Mail is published weekly and distributed across the Shire of Augusta Margaret River, including Margaret River, Augusta, Cowaramup, Witchcliffe, Gracetown and Prevelly. It is available in print at newsagents and outlets across the district and online at margaretrivermail.com.au. The paper is owned by Sports Entertainment Network, which also operates SEN Spirit Southwest radio in the region; local government notices for the district continue to be published in the Mail, and the Shire of Augusta Margaret River's offices at Margaret River and Augusta can direct residents to current distribution points.