About Toodyay Herald

Toodyay Herald

Overview

The Toodyay Herald is a community-owned monthly newspaper serving Toodyay and the surrounding Avon Valley district in Western Australia. It is produced by a local incorporated association through a volunteer committee of management, published eleven times a year — there is no January edition — and delivered free to post office boxes and letterboxes across the district, with postal subscriptions for readers further away. Its masthead describes it as "your locally owned community newspaper" and carries the line "Est. 1902", the paper's own claim to the lineage of the historical Toodyay Herald. The modern paper is a genuine news operation, not a newsletter: the Shire of Toodyay's council records through 2025 and into 2026 repeatedly name the Toodyay Herald as the locally circulating newspaper in which the Shire places its statutory advertising, and the council's July 2025 minutes record both that a planning proposal had been "the subject of at least 2 stories within the local community newspaper 'The Herald'" and that a May 2025 protest rally "was subsequently reported in the Toodyay Herald". A special council meeting agenda of 18 June 2026 again provides for the Shire's differential rates advertisement to be placed in the Toodyay Herald — the clearest third-party evidence that the paper is publishing now.

History

Newspapers under the Herald name have served Toodyay for more than a century, though the present paper is a community revival rather than an unbroken continuation. The historical Toodyay Herald is preserved in the National Library of Australia's Trove archive with a run catalogued from 1912 to 1954; it was a conventional commercial country weekly, printed in Stirling Terrace, the town's main street. A local history of Herald House at 72 Stirling Terrace records that Edgar Turley, a trained printer who had edited and printed an engineers' journal during the First World War, bought the Toodyay Herald in 1921 and was its proprietor and editor, before selling it to United Press Ltd in July 1926. The title later disappeared from publication. The modern paper dates itself, in the "Est. 1902" line on its masthead, to the district's earliest newspaper era, but its own anniversary record tells the revival story plainly: the December 2009 issue marked twenty-five years of the present paper, reproduced its first issue on the front page, and recalled that it had been envisioned by a group of community members after a long break in the title's publication — placing the modern Herald's beginning in the mid-1980s. It has been published by that community model ever since: owned by its members, run by an elected committee, and produced with the help of volunteers, an arrangement that has carried it through decades in which most comparable country papers in Western Australia were absorbed by chains or closed.

Programming and Content

The Herald's pages mix hard local news with the contributed record of a small farming and heritage town. Its front page leads on district-shaping stories: the February 2016 issue, for example, led with the indefinite postponement of a proposed bauxite mine at Morangup and Wundowie and the loss of hundreds of promised jobs, reported by the paper's editor. Council business is a staple — Shire of Toodyay planning proposals, rates decisions and scheme amendments are both advertised in the paper and argued over in its news and letters pages, and the Shire's 2025 records show the Herald reporting a protest rally over a planning amendment as well as carrying at least two stories on the proposal itself. Community groups write their own record into the paper: the Toodyay Naturalists' Club newsletter of April 2021 describes a call for sightings and photographs issued "through the Environment segment of The Toodyay Herald, the monthly community newspaper", one of the contributed segments that fill its pages alongside club reports, school and sport news, historical features, letters and photographs. The paper charges nothing for articles that appear in it and explicitly invites contributions of letters, articles and photographs from all members of the community, asking only that photographs be supplied at a size suitable for print reproduction. Advertising from local businesses and the Shire sits around the editorial content and funds the operation.

Audience and Reach

The Herald's own published figures — its figures, stated here as its claims rather than audited measurements — put its distribution at 4,250 copies in the February 2016 masthead, of which 2,800 copies were delivered monthly to post office boxes and letterboxes in Toodyay, Morangup and Bolgart. The masthead's circulation list names the district it serves: Toodyay and West Toodyay, Goomalling, Bolgart, Calingiri, Morangup, Coondle, Culham, Bejoording, Nunile, Julimar, Bakers Hill, Clackline, Wundowie, Gidgegannup and local districts — a wide, thinly settled arc of the Avon Valley and the valley's feeder towns along the road and rail lines toward Perth. Beyond the delivered copies, the paper has been available at roadhouses and businesses in Toodyay, Northam and York and at stores and newsagencies in Clackline, Bakers Hill, Gidgegannup and Wundowie. No audited circulation exists for the paper, and none is claimed here. Its practical reach is better evidenced by its role: the Shire of Toodyay is required to publish notices in a locally circulating newspaper, and its 2025 minutes name the Toodyay Herald as that newspaper — a statutory acknowledgement that the Herald is the print medium that reaches this community.

Digital Presence

The Herald publishes online at toodyayherald.com.au, the address printed in its own pages; the site is linked from reference sources as carrying the paper "online, including current and back issues", so readers beyond the delivery district can read the monthly editions there. Its digital footprint is otherwise deliberately modest: the paper's governing records are its printed mastheads and the public documents of the Shire that advertises in it. Searches of the Australian Communications and Media Authority's Register of Eligible News Businesses made for this profile found no entry for the Toodyay Herald, which is consistent with its scale and structure — a small, not-for-profit community association paper sitting outside the commercial registers. The traces of its current operation are nonetheless firm and dated: Shire of Toodyay minutes and agendas of March, May, July and December 2025 and June 2026 name the paper as the vehicle for statutory advertisements still to be placed and, in July 2025, discuss news coverage the Herald had already published that year.

Ownership and Organisation

The Toodyay Herald is owned by its community through a not-for-profit incorporated association and governed by an elected committee of management. Membership is open to residents of the Shire of Toodyay — the paper's February 2016 masthead set the fee at ten dollars per financial year, with members entitled to a small annual allowance of free advertising — and postal subscriptions were offered at thirty dollars a year for the eleven issues. The February 2016 masthead names the paper's office-holders at that date: president Bill Manning, vice-president Peter Ruthven, secretary Heather Appleby and treasurer Beth Ruthven, with a committee of local members; the editor was Michael Sinclair-Jones, with Meredith Neilsen as assistant editor, and the paper thanked a team of volunteers who had helped produce the edition. Those names are recorded here as the paper's own 2016 masthead, not as a claim about its present office-holders. The organisation is based in Stirling Terrace, Toodyay — its office has been at 92 Stirling Terrace, with postal address PO Box 100, Toodyay — and the 2016 masthead records the paper as printed by Rural Press. It is independent of the chains that own most Western Australian newspapers: no Seven West Media, ACM or other group interest is involved in it.

Contact and Availability

The Toodyay Herald is published monthly, eleven times a year with no January edition, and is on the streets in the first week of each month; the paper's stated deadline for contributions is the day before the last Wednesday of the preceding month. It is delivered free to post office boxes and letterboxes in Toodyay, Morangup and Bolgart and is available at businesses and newsagencies across the district, with postal subscriptions for readers elsewhere. The paper's office is at 92 Stirling Terrace, Toodyay, Western Australia, and its postal address is PO Box 100, Toodyay WA 6566. Its published news and general inquiries telephone number is (08) 9574 2106, and its published email address is toodyayherald@westnet.com.au. Current and back issues are published through its website for readers outside the district.