P. Jeff Wallace "The Newspaper man"

 

Type in the Harbour

(Article in The Nepean Times on Saturday 4th August 1928)

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                                            One of the oldest pressmen in the world, P. Jeff Wallace, blew out

                                            90 candles on his birthday, cake on July 23. Mr Wallace, who has launched                                             more newspapers than any other man in New South Wales, served his                                                   cadet ship in the 'old " S.M. Herald" office.

      

His                                      own first proprietary venture was in ‘58 (1858), when he ran the "Weekly                                                Times” (North Sydney), published in a portable office which shifted its site,                                              per wheel, up and down  Blue's Point road.

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His partner and sub. was Waiter E. Lenthall, internal inspector of police and subsequently inheritor of a large estate and pots of money in England.

 

The type was set up on Blue’s Point Road. and carried across to Sydney, where the paper was printed on Robert Barr's platen press, -the first machine of its kind imported to Australia. But

the flourishing little rag met with an untimely end when Ben Barnett's rowing boat (a waterman's skiff) capsized in the harbor and buried type and all deep in Port Jackson mud. 

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Jeff Wallace's next serious attempt at running a newspaper was at "St. Leonards Recorder" born in 1877, and afterwards sold to William Fairfax, a cousin of the "S.M. Herald” proprietors. Mr Fairfax died shortly afterwards, and his son, William, carried on the "Recorder" but. it lived only about thre years. Mr Wallace still turns out a bit of verse and other ''copy" “Abbess” in the “Bulletin."