About Pyrenees Advocate

Pyrenees Advocate

Overview

The Pyrenees Advocate is the local newspaper of Beaufort and the Pyrenees Shire in western Victoria, a rural district of gold-rush towns, farmland and forest country between Ballarat and Ararat. It is published by West Vic News Pty Ltd, the independent regional publisher run by Craig Wilson, and it belongs to a small stable of western Victorian mastheads that also includes The Ararat Advocate and the Stawell Times-News. The paper continues a Beaufort newspaper lineage that reaches back to 1874: in its submission to the Australian Parliament's inquiry into regional newspapers, dated 28 January 2022, West Vic News described it as "the 148-year-old Pyrenees Advocate", and its age and survival make it one of the older country newspapers still publishing in Victoria.

The Advocate is a weekly. Library and community sources record its print edition as a Friday publication, and it publishes continuously online through the West Vic News digital platform, where its own web address is pyreneesadvocate.com.au. Current publication was confirmed directly from that platform in October 2026, when fresh Beaufort and Pyrenees district stories — including Pyrenees Shire Council news — were dated between 15 and 18 October 2026. The paper also appears in the Australian Press Council's September 2026 list of constituent publications, in the Country Press Australia Victoria section, confirming its standing as a current member publication of the country press. The website recorded in the inventory for this profile, theadvocate.net.au, is the shared West Vic News platform domain also associated with its sister title in Ararat; the position is explained in the Digital Presence section below and should be resolved at publish time in favour of the paper's own platform address.

History

Newspaper publishing in Beaufort began in the gold era. The town's long-running nineteenth and twentieth century newspaper was the Riponshire Advocate, cited in State Library of Victoria catalogue records as published at Beaufort from 1874 to 1994. Beaufort, a service town on the Western Highway in the former Shire of Ripon, sat within a district that supported several small papers over the decades, among them the Avoca Mail from the neighbouring township of Avoca. The modern Pyrenees Advocate emerged from the local government amalgamations of the mid-1990s, when the shires of Avoca, Ripon and Lexton were merged into the new Pyrenees Shire. From that point a single newspaper covered the whole district under the Pyrenees name, with offices in both Beaufort and Avoca, and the paper has served the combined shire ever since.

The paper achieved a brief national prominence at the end of 2009. Craig Wilson, then its editor, attended a public meeting in Beaufort on 30 September 2009 at which Tony Abbott, then a senior Liberal frontbencher weeks away from becoming leader of his party, discussed climate policy with local farmers. Wilson reported Abbott's remark that the argument behind climate change action was "absolute crap". The quotation was taken up by The Australian, whose journalist Stuart Rintoul published "The town that turned up the temperature" on 12 December 2009, crediting Wilson and the Pyrenees Advocate, and ABC Victoria also covered the episode, identifying Wilson as the paper's editor. The episode remains a frequently cited example of a small country newspaper originating a story of national political consequence.

Wilson's association with the paper proved long-term. By 2022 he was the publisher of West Vic News, the company whose January 2022 submission to the federal regional newspapers inquiry described a business built around the Pyrenees Advocate and its younger Ararat sister: seven full-time-equivalent staff across the two communities, offices in Ararat and Beaufort, and a deliberately local model of reinvesting in the publications. In May 2020 the company had launched The Ararat Advocate for the neighbouring district after Australian Community Media suspended printing of the Ararat Advertiser; in February 2025 it acquired the Advertiser and the Stawell Times-News from ACM, merging the Advertiser into its Ararat paper and continuing the Stawell title, whose first edition under West Vic News appeared on 7 March 2025. In 2026 the group's Beaufort commitment deepened further when, as reported on the site of its monthly lifestyle magazine Cygnet, the company bought Beaufort's Sun Print printing business; Wilson, described in that profile as a publisher who grew up in Ararat and spent 35 years as a country editor, launched Cygnet as a monthly magazine for the region alongside his newspapers.

Programming and Content

The Pyrenees Advocate is a general local newspaper for its shire, and its stories appear on the West Vic News platform under the platform's standard sections: Latest News and General News; Council and Politics; Rural and Agriculture; Lifestyle and Entertainment; Our People; Sport; Business; and Opinion and Perspectives. For the Beaufort paper, that structure translates into reporting on the Pyrenees Shire Council and local politics, farming and rural affairs for the district's agricultural readership, community profiles, local sport from Beaufort, Avoca and the smaller townships, and opinion and reader contributions.

The currency of that coverage can be seen in the stories the platform carried in mid-October 2026, which included Pyrenees Shire Council news for the Beaufort community, a road trial conducted with RMIT University in the district, and the construction of a new dog park — the unglamorous, practical record of local government and community life that is the core business of a country weekly. Some stories on the platform are free to read and others are reserved for subscribers, following the same model the company applies across its mastheads, and the print edition continues to appear each week for readers who take the paper in its traditional form.

Audience and Reach

The Advocate's audience is the population of the Pyrenees Shire — Beaufort and Avoca and the farming districts and small settlements around them, including places such as Lexton, Waubra, Raglan and Snake Valley — together with readers who have moved away but follow the district online. Since the mid-1990s amalgamation of the district's shires and newspapers, it has been the only local newspaper covering the entire shire, a position noted in accounts of its predecessor titles. No audited circulation figure for the paper is published, and none is claimed here; West Vic News told the 2022 federal inquiry that it employed seven full-time-equivalent staff across its Ararat and Beaufort operations at that time, a figure the company gave for the group as it then stood and which is recorded here as its own dated statement. The paper's significance to its audience rests on its role as the district's paper of record for council decisions, courts and community affairs in a small rural market that larger publishers have progressively withdrawn from.

Digital Presence

The Pyrenees Advocate's digital home is its own address, pyreneesadvocate.com.au, which operates as part of the West Vic News platform alongside the company's Ararat and Stawell mastheads. The platform presents the group's titles together, applies a common subscription model in which selected stories are free and others sit behind the paywall, and was actively publishing Beaufort stories dated 15 to 18 October 2026 when the site was examined for this profile. The website recorded in the inventory for this profile is theadvocate.net.au, the domain listed against the company's Ararat title in Country Press Australia's April 2021 authorisation application to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, in which West Vic News also gave its contact address as 32 Willoby Street, Beaufort. Because the two sister papers share the company's platform and branding, the inventory applied the platform domain to both; at publish time this profile's website field should be set to the Pyrenees Advocate's own address, pyreneesadvocate.com.au.

Ownership and Organisation

The Pyrenees Advocate is owned and published by West Vic News Pty Ltd, an independent Victorian regional publisher whose publisher is Craig Wilson. Wilson's connection with the paper stretches back at least to 2009, when he was its editor during the Tony Abbott episode, and the company's profile in its own magazine describes a career of 35 years as a country editor. West Vic News publishes three newspapers in western Victoria: the Pyrenees Advocate at Beaufort, The Ararat Advocate, launched by the company in 2020, and the Stawell Times-News, acquired from Australian Community Media in 2025. The platform footer published by the company gives its address as West Vic News, 93a Barkly Street, Ararat, Victoria 3377, with telephone 03 5352 2866; the company has also maintained an office in Beaufort, giving 32 Willoby Street, Beaufort as its contact address in its April 2021 Press Council authorisation application. Staffing stated in the company's January 2022 parliamentary submission — seven full-time-equivalent positions across its two communities of Ararat and Beaufort — is the most recent establishment figure the company has put on the public record, and it predates the 2025 acquisition of the Stawell title.

Contact and Availability

The Pyrenees Advocate is published weekly in print, appearing on Fridays, and continuously online at pyreneesadvocate.com.au through the West Vic News platform. The publisher, West Vic News, can be contacted at 93a Barkly Street, Ararat VIC 3377, telephone 03 5352 2866, and the paper has historically also been contactable through its Beaufort office. Subscriptions, advertising and news enquiries are handled through the platform and the publisher's office. The public business email field for this profile is intentionally left blank, in line with the directory's policy.