Hauraki Plains Gazette

The Hauraki Plains succeeded the Ohinemuri Gazette in August 1921, incorporating it into the new title. Influencing this change was a desire to capture and acknowledge the importance of the newspaper to the wider region:

‘It will be readily conceded that the name Ohinemuri Gazette by no means conveys an adequate indication of the district over which this journal circulates, or its sphere of influence’ (1 August 1921: 2).

While Ōhinemuru had grown around the founding of a goldfield in 1875, the wider Hauraki region also had a rich history of the kauri-timber industry, gold mining and industrial conflict. The change in the name of the title, was a decisive move to connect with and reflect the entire region, rather than just the Ōhinemuru community.

In 1931, owner William Dennis Nicholas began the Coromandel & Mercury Bay Gazette. Nicholas then sold the business in 1939 to Rei Lancelot Darley, previously editor and manager of the Pahiatua Herald. In 1951, Darley began publishing the weekly Waihi Gazette as well, firstly in Waihi and then in Paeroa.

By 1956 the Thames Valley Newspapers’ office in Paeroa was publishing the Hauraki Plains Gazette on Monday, Wednesday and Friday; the Coromandel & Mercury Bay Gazette, produced as a separate publication again after a period incorporated in the Hauraki Plains Gazette, every Tuesday; and the Waihi Gazette on Thursday.  

In 1961, with a two unit flat-bed Cossar press recently installed, Rei Darley entered a five-year association with Waikato and King Country Press Ltd, owners of the Waikato Times. Thames Valley Newspapers were then shareholders in the group that owned the Morrinsville Star, Putaruru News and Taupo Times.

At the end of the period, Darley withdrew from the association and the next year opened an office in Thames, renaming the Coromandel & Mercury Bay Gazette as the Thames and Peninsula Gazette. The re-positioned paper did well, but rising costs forced further changes. In 1977, a new publication, the Thames Valley Gazette, incorporated both the Hauraki Plains Gazette and Thames and Peninsula Gazette.  

The Waihi Gazette moved to a free circulation in 1986, the same year Rei Darley died. Subsequently, an offer by Independent Newspapers Ltd to buy the company was accepted. Their subsidiary, Hauraki Publishers, took over the Thames Valley Gazette and Waihi Gazette in December 1986. 

In August 1988, the Ohinemuri Gazette had, after 107 years, its second-to-last name change to Paeroa Gazette and moved from broadsheet to a tabloid format.

Finally, a decade later, the paper merged with the Thames Star in 1998, becoming the Thames Valley Gazette again. It survived less than a year.