Temuka Leader

In 1877, while the prodigious ‘ragplanter’ Joseph Ivess was running the Ashburton Mail, he found the time in December that year to start the twice-weekly Temuka Leader in Temuka, about 60 kms to the south.

Such was Temuka’s appreciation that Ivess was accorded a public dinner by the town’s dignitaries. It was subsequently reported that the guest of honour, in response to effusive remarks, made his position quite clear. ‘He did not start the paper with the motive of patriotism, but as a commercial undertaking, and was prepared to give the district a fair trial, and to test its capabilities and willingness to support the paper .... If .... the district proved unable or unwilling to support the venture, he would abide by that verdict, and withdraw from the scene of action.’

The support was there but, characteristically, Ivess was almost immediately eyeing other prospects and he sold the paper three months later to J J Utting, a Lyttelton Times reporter. He, in turn, sold to another reporter, the Evening Post’s Jeremiah Twomey, in December 1881. Twomey ran the paper, now tri-weekly, and the tri-weekly Geraldine Guardian, which he began in early 1883, from Temuka - 18 kms south of Geraldine - for a number of years.

Twomey sold to R R Martin in 1912 and Temuka mayor Colonel Hayhurst was owner when he was killed in a car accident in August 1914. According to the Auckland Star in January 1932 his widow ‘who, though having no interests in journalism, carried it on until now because it represented a local industry’.

The closure of the two papers was announced in February 1932 but, with another company taking over, there was a reprieve for about a year. In March 1933 it was announced that ‘both newspapers will be incorporated with the South Canterbury Weekly Review, a new 16-page paper to be published by the same proprietors at Temuka.’ They were ‘compelled to relinquish their usefulness to the district through the strong opposition of daily newspapers published in Timaru and Christchurch.’ The Weekly Review had a short life.