About Lilydale Star Mail

Lilydale Star Mail

Overview

The Lilydale Star Mail is a weekly newspaper serving Lilydale and the Shire of Yarra Ranges at the eastern edge of Melbourne, published by the family-owned Star News Group as part of its Star Mail stable of local titles. Launched in 2021 — the youngest of the Star Mail newspapers — it covers council affairs, planning, schools, community life and local sport for Lilydale and the surrounding foothills suburbs and towns. It publishes in print and online at lilydale.mailcommunity.com.au, and Australian Associated Press's submission to the parliamentary inquiry into Australia's regional newspapers classified it as a print and digital title. The newspaper is one of seventeen newspaper mastheads operated by Star News Group Pty Ltd recorded in the Australian Communications and Media Authority's Register of Eligible News Businesses, and it remains in active publication: Yarra Ranges Council exhibited a planning amendment with a statutory notice published in the Lilydale Star Mail on 28 October 2025, and the title appears in Country Press Australia's current industry submissions.

History

The Lilydale Star Mail's history is that of its publisher as much as its town. Star News Group traces its origins to 1909, when Albert Edward Thomas founded the Berwick Shire News and Pakenham and Cranbourne Gazette; the business has remained in the Thomas family ever since, and its managing director, Paul Thomas, is the founder's great-grandson. The group traded as South East Newspapers until a rebrand in August 2005, and trade publication GXpress describes it as one of the largest independent newspaper publishers in Australia; in December 2022 it bought 14 further titles from ACM, including the Latrobe Valley Express and the Warragul & Drouin Gazette, and Paul Thomas has said the group's local papers are "so close to their local people, which is the reason why they've been successful". The Star Mail brand grew out of the Mail Newspaper Group, publisher of community newspapers in Melbourne's outer east and the Yarra Ranges: in the early 2000s Star took a half share in the Mail business alongside the Higgins family's North East Newspapers, and assumed management of the group the following year, with the Star Mail titles produced from the group's Healesville base. Star News Group's presence in the Yarra Ranges therefore predates the Lilydale launch by some two decades, through the Mail titles centred on Healesville in the shire's north. The Lilydale title itself is a twenty-first-century addition. The Australian Newsroom Mapping Project recorded in May 2021 that Star News Group had launched "a new weekly newspaper in the Shire of Yarra Ranges... the Lilydale Star Mail", noting that the region already contained five other Star Mail papers. Its first edition appeared on Tuesday, 4 May 2021. The launch extended the Star Mail network — which includes the Mountain Views Star Mail, Ranges Trader Star Mail, Mount Evelyn Star Mail, Upper Yarra Star Mail and Ferntree Gully Star Mail — into the Yarra Ranges' largest township, giving Lilydale a dedicated local newspaper of its own.

Programming and Content

The Lilydale Star Mail covers the municipal and community life of Lilydale and the Yarra Ranges. Council reporting is central to its role: Yarra Ranges Council uses the paper for the statutory advertising of planning matters, including Amendment C226, for which a public notice was published in the newspaper on 28 October 2025 ahead of an exhibition period running from 30 October to 1 December 2025. Its reporting patch runs across the Yarra Ranges, from Lilydale itself through Coldstream and the towns of the Yarra Valley, in a shire that combines commuter suburbs at Melbourne's metropolitan fringe with farming and tourism communities along the river. Its news pages report planning applications and disputes, road and infrastructure projects, local schools, emergency services, community groups and the valley's events, and its sport coverage follows the district's football, netball and cricket competitions. As part of the Star Mail network, the paper shares production resources and some syndicated material with its sister titles while maintaining Lilydale-focused news content on its website, where stories are published under the mailcommunity.com.au domain the group uses for the Star Mail papers. On that shared platform, the title's site carries its local news, sport and community material in the same format as its sister editions. Statutory advertising of this kind is a traditional function of the local weekly, and its placement in the Lilydale Star Mail is documented in the council's own exhibition record for Amendment C226.

Audience and Reach

The newspaper's audience is the population of Lilydale and the wider Yarra Ranges — one of Victoria's largest municipalities by area, spanning the urban fringe suburbs at the foot of the Dandenong Ranges and the towns of the Yarra Valley. Readers encounter the paper in print and through its website and the group's digital channels. No circulation figure specific to the Lilydale Star Mail is published in the public records sighted for this profile; Star News Group promotes its Victorian titles collectively as delivering a weekly audience encompassing more than 500,000 copies a week, a group-level claim by the publisher that is not attributed to this title here. Parliamentary inquiry data records the title plainly — "Lilydale Star Mail, print, Star News Group, local, Yarra Ranges Shire" — and the paper's documented use by its council for statutory notices, its inclusion in the ACMA news business register and its listing in Country Press Australia's 2026 consultation submission all confirm a continuing, recognised place in the district's media landscape.

Digital Presence

The Lilydale Star Mail publishes online at lilydale.mailcommunity.com.au, the address recorded for the title in the ACMA register, where its news stories are posted for local readers between print editions. The Star Mail titles share the group's mailcommunity.com.au platform, and Star News Group presents the Lilydale paper among its current newspaper products. The title's bylined reporting is indexed by media-monitoring services, and its digital edition status is recorded as print and digital in Australian Associated Press's classification for the parliamentary regional newspapers inquiry. The title is also listed among Country Press Australia's publications in the association's current submission to the federal News Bargaining Incentive consultation, placing the suburban title within the national country-press industry body.

Ownership and Organisation

The Lilydale Star Mail is owned and published by Star News Group Pty Ltd (ABN 98 238 557 339), the Pakenham-based family company whose seventeen newspaper mastheads are listed in the ACMA Register of Eligible News Businesses (register entry dated 6 January 2026), with Paul Thomas, the group's managing director, as the registered contact. Founded in 1909 and still owned by the Thomas family, Star News Group publishes the Pakenham Gazette lineage of titles in Melbourne's south-east, the Star Weekly titles in the west and north through MMP Star Pty Ltd, and the Star Mail titles in the east, which are produced from the group's Healesville base. The Lilydale Star Mail's local reporting is supported by the group's centralised accounting, creative, information technology and systems functions, while its journalists and advertising staff work on their local patch — the operating model Paul Thomas has described for the group.

Contact and Availability

The Lilydale Star Mail is published weekly for Lilydale and the Yarra Ranges, Victoria, in print and online at lilydale.mailcommunity.com.au. The registered contact for its publisher, Star News Group Pty Ltd, in the ACMA Register of Eligible News Businesses is Paul Thomas, telephone 03 5945 0666. Yarra Ranges Council statutory notices and community announcements appear in the paper's editions, and readers can follow its coverage through the Star Mail website.