About The Surfcoast Times

The Surfcoast Times

The Surfcoast Times (published as the Surf Coast Times) is the community newspaper of the Surf Coast Shire, Victoria — the coastal district from Torquay to Lorne on the Great Ocean Road. Published by the Times News Group from its Torquay headquarters, it is the flagship Victorian title of the independent regional group led by managing director Warick Brown, and a PANPA Non-Daily Newspaper of the Year nominee.

Overview

The Surfcoast Times is the paper of the Surf Coast — Torquay, the surfing capital; Anglesea, Aireys Inlet, and Lorne along the Great Ocean Road; and the hinterland towns of the Surf Coast Shire. The district is Victoria's surf coast: the Bells Beach Easter surfing contests, the coastal tourism, the sea-change population, and the fastest-growing coastal communities in the state.

Torquay is the town that put Australian surfing on the map: the birthplace of the surf industry — Rip Curl and Quiksilver both founded in Torquay in 1969 — and the home of Bells Beach, the legendary break south of town that hosts the Easter surfing contests. Anglesea, Aireys Inlet (with its Split Point Lighthouse), and Lorne (the Erskine Falls, the historic pier, the artists' colony) line the Great Ocean Road westward. The hinterland — the farmland and the growing communities — completes the shire. The paper covers the coast's defining tensions: the tourism economy and the resident community, the development pressures and the environmental protections, the surf culture and the sea-change growth.

The paper is published by the Times News Group — Surf Coast News Australia Pty Ltd, based in Torquay — from 2/12 Cylinders Drive, Torquay. The National Library of Australia catalogues the Times News Group's Surf Coast Times from 2019, and the paper's volume numbering (Vol 20 in 2022) continues the lineage of the earlier Surf Coast title.

History

The Surf Coast Times entered the Times News Group stable in 2019 — the Torquay-based independent group that has become one of the notable success stories of the regional press revival. The group's managing director, Warick Brown, built the group from the Surf Coast base: the Surf Coast, Bellarine, Geelong, Armstrong Creek, Golden Plains, Ballarat, Bendigo, Moorabool, and McIvor Times titles across Victoria, plus the Byron Coast, Ballina, Tweed Coast, Lismore, Narrabri Courier, Gunnedah Times, and Wee Waa News titles in New South Wales.

The group's most celebrated intervention came in 2026, when it rescued the McIvor Times (163 years old) and the Moorabool News (154 years old) from closure — the B&T-reported rescue that made the Times News Group a national story of regional press revival. The Surfcoast Times is the paper at the heart of that group: the Torquay flagship whose success funded the expansion.

The Times News Group's model — the Torquay-based independent, publishing free community weeklies across the Victorian regions and into New South Wales — is the counter-narrative to the country press's consolidation era: a group built by acquiring and reviving titles, not by closing them. The group's Victorian footprint spans the Surf Coast, Bellarine, Geelong, Armstrong Creek, Golden Plains, Ballarat, Bendigo, Moorabool, and McIvor districts; its New South Wales titles run from the Byron and Tweed coasts to the north-west plains. Each title has its own page under the group's website convention — timesnewsgroup.com.au// — with the Surf Coast Times at /surfcoasttimes/.

The paper's standing in the industry was recognised with its shortlisting among the PANPA Non-Daily Newspaper of the Year contenders — alongside Queensland Country Life, The Land, the North Queensland Register, and the South Western Times — the national newspaper awards' regional category. For a Torquay community weekly to stand alongside the great rural titles is a mark of the paper's quality — and of the Times News Group's arrival as a force in the regional press.

The Surf Coast Times' district is also the group's home ground: the Torquay headquarters at 2/12 Cylinders Drive houses the independent publisher that has become the regional press's revival story. The phone — (03) 5264 8412 — rings in the town where the group began, and the paper it produces is the flagship of the fleet: the Surf Coast's own Times, the paper of the surfing capital.

Content

The Surfcoast Times covers the community life of the Surf Coast Shire. Its journalism spans:

• Coast news: Torquay, Anglesea, Aireys Inlet, Lorne — the coastal towns' news, the Surf Coast Shire Council, and the district's development debates, from the seawall upgrades to the planning battles.
• Surf culture: Bells Beach, the Easter surfing contests, the surf industry — the culture that defines the coast, from the boardriders' clubs to the global brands born in Torquay's back streets.
• Tourism: the Great Ocean Road, the coastal attractions, and the visitor economy — the road that brings the world to the coast, and the paper that tells the coast's story to its visitors and its residents alike.
• Growth: the sea-change population, the new estates, the infrastructure of the growing coast — Armstrong Creek's expansion, the Torquay growth front, and the shire's management of the coast's popularity.
• Sport: the local football and netball clubs, cricket, surfing competitions, and the district's sporting life — from the junior Auskick ovals to the Bells Beach contests, the coast's sporting calendar in full.

Coverage & Audience

The Surfcoast Times is a community newspaper serving the Surf Coast Shire — Torquay, Anglesea, Aireys Inlet, Lorne, and the hinterland — published in English, in print and online through the Times News Group's website. The paper's Thursday rhythm — the NLA's catalogue records Thursday issues, Vol 20 No 37 on 15 September 2022 — is the weekly heartbeat of the coast: the paper that lands as the weekend's surf, events, and shire news take shape. Its audience is the residents of the surf coast — the surfers and sea-changers, the tourism workers, the townspeople of the coastal strip — who rely on the paper for the district news, council coverage, and community stories of the coast. The paper's journalism lands where the coast's debates live: the frontpage story on the Cosy Corner timber seawall upgrade, the letters to the editor on the shire's men's shed efforts, the Auskick reports from the junior ovals. It is the coast's forum as well as its record.

Ownership

The Surfcoast Times is published by the Times News Group — Surf Coast News Australia Pty Ltd, the Torquay-based independent regional group led by managing director Warick Brown. The group's Victorian titles include the Surf Coast, Bellarine, Geelong, Armstrong Creek, Golden Plains, Ballarat, Bendigo, Moorabool, and McIvor Times; its New South Wales titles include the Byron Coast, Ballina, Tweed Coast, and Lismore papers, the Narrabri Courier, Gunnedah Times, and Wee Waa News.

Digital Presence

The Surfcoast Times operates online at timesnewsgroup.com.au/surfcoasttimes/ — its official page within the Times News Group's website — extending the paper's reach across the surf coast and beyond. The paper's digital presence complements its print edition published from Cylinders Drive, Torquay, carrying the coast's community journalism online.

For the Surf Coast, the Times is the coast's own paper — the community record of the surfing capital, from the Bells Beach contests to the shire halls, still publishing from Torquay at the heart of the Times News Group, still the flagship of the regional press revival, still Torquay's own, in print every week, on the coast, without fail, every week.