''The Leader'' is a weekly newspaper that was first published in Angaston, South Australia on 24 July 1918, and continues being published to the present day in the

Barossa Valley The Barossa Valley (Barossa German: ''Barossa Tal'') is a valley in South Australia located northeast of Adelaide city centre. The valley is formed by the North Para River. It is notable as a major list of wine-producing regions, wine-producin ...

. It was the first English-language newspaper covering any part of the Barossa Valley, apart from the '' Kapunda Herald''.

History

''The Leader'' was founded and for many years edited and printed by William Kirkby Robinson (1894–1976). Offices were from 1935 or earlier, to December 1938 or later, printing and publishing in Dean Street, Angaston. From 1933, Robinson was secretary of the Angaston branch of the Agricultural Bureau, and was the founder of the Lower North pruning competition held yearly. He was responsible for the formation of the Barossa Fire Fighting Association in 1926 and has been fire control officer since then, and was for many years chief officer of the Angaston Fire Brigade. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the seat of Barossa at the 1944

House of Assembly House of Assembly is a name given to the legislature or lower house of a bicameral parliament. In some countries this may be at a subnational level. Historically, in British Crown colonies as the colony gained more internal responsible g ...

by-election. From 1937 he also published '' The Sport'', an Adelaide weekly. He was for some time chairman of directors of the Provincial Press Co-operative Company Ltd. (an advertising agency linked to the Provincial Press Association of South Australia). He was married to Agnes Elizabeth Robinson Knapp; they had one child, (Kirkby) Rae Robinson (1918–1990), who married Molly Mansfield (1918–2003) on 24 January 1942. In 1964, ''The Leader'' absorbed the ''Murray Plains Recorder'' (13 January 1961 - 24 September 1964), formerly the ''Mannum and District Recorder'' (2 June 1955 – 16 June 1960), which had been published in

Mannum Mannum is a historic town on the west bank of the Murray River in South Australia, east of Adelaide. Mannum is the seat of the Mid Murray Council, and is situated in the state electoral district of Hammond and the federal Division of Barker. ...

Distribution

Its geographical coverage includes Angaston, Nuriootpa, Tanunda, Mount Pleasant, Kapunda and Gawler.

Digitisation

The

National Library of Australia The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "mainta ...

has digitised photographic copies of most issues of ''The Leader'' fro
Vol 1, No.1
of 24 July 1918 t
Vol. 36 No. 1,961
of 16 December 1954 that may be accessed via

Trove Trove is an Australian online library database owned by the National Library of Australia in which it holds partnerships with source providers National and State Libraries Australia, an aggregator and service which includes full text documen ...

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Leader, The Newspapers published in South Australia Newspapers established in 1918 1918 establishments in Australia Weekly newspapers published in Australia