Founder of Derwent Valley Gazette passes

The founder of the Derwent Valley Gazette, Peter Howell, sadly passed away late last week. 

Along with his first wife, Betty (nee Triffett), Peter started the Derwent Valley Gazette in 1953, which he sold to Davies Brothers (the Mercury newspaper) in 1980. In 2019, Font Publishing acquired the Gazette from News Ltd.

Earlier this year, Gazette editor Mike Kerr caught up with Peter Howell to discuss his life and times; the article is re-produced below.

THE VALLEY LEGEND BEHIND YOUR GAZETTE (Derwent Valley Gazette, 13 March 2024).

It has to be said: Peter Howell has the constitution of a man half his age. He moves easily, and his conversation moves fluidly betweentimes past and subjects well understood.     

It’s more than 70 years now, but the first publisher of the Derwent Valley Gazette has a clear memory of the world that was when he started working life at 17.

Curiously, it wasn’t in printing, but in paper. His first job was at ANM, the Boyer plant, where his role had a scientific underpinning.

Fairly quickly, he realized the work on the paper machines would render twice the two pounds nine shillings and tenpence that was his weekly wage. He started work on a paper machine as a Fifth Hand.

On the social side, young Howell was involving himself in New Norfolk’s youth clubs and going to dances, which is how he met the lovely Betty Triffett.

The daughter of A.I. Triffett who had a small New Norfolk printing business, Betty kept the printery going by doing small work such as invitations and Ball posters in her spare time.

Operating out of a backyard shed on Stephens Street in New Norfolk, “the printing business was a simple affair, not much more than a handfed platen printer, some cases of type, and a guillotine for cutting paper,” he says.

“But to get close to Betty,” he admits, “I began helping out.” She taught him how to set type and print.

“Over time, we built up the business a little. I’d handfeed window envelopes through a machine to add addresses, or for the Mobil company, make windscreen stickers.

Peter and Betty got married in 1948.  He was still at Boyer, but things were looking up in the printing game so a year later, he quit ANM and began looking outside New Norfolk to get a sense of where the printing business could go next.

“We bought an Italian automatic machine that speeded up things to the point we could do 50,000 envelopes a day, which was unheard of back then!

“Work increased, and in 1953 we decided to start a local newspaper.”

Chats with Bill Davies, the publisher of The Mercury newspaper became commonplace. ”They printed the Gazette until we could install the necessary equipment,” says Peter.

Initially called the Derwent Gazette, the name was changed to Derwent Valley Gazette a short time later.

The first issue was on Friday, March 27, 1953 and the lead story was the New Norfolk Council’s 8,000 pound bank loan towards the cost of a War Memorial Hall. 

By 1960, the Howells had established an entirely new operation on Burnett Street. And contracts came their way, including one for the Football Record, the official program for all the Southern games, printing upwards of 7,000 copies a week.

“That was a big deal in the business,” he says. By now, staff numbers had risen to 13 and the printery was competing with the bigger companies of Hobart.

But on the personal front, it was a horrible time. His much-loved Betty succumbed to cancer.  “In the space of 18 months,” he recalls, “I lost not only my wife, but both my parents, a brother and my father-in-law.”

He took some time off, travelled to West Australia to get some perspective on life, and decided to fight through, eventually redirecting himself deeper into the printing business.

A sophisticated Heidelberg offset printing machine allowed for work for Australia Newsprint Mills, the Silk and Textiles company and the Law Society. There was a special four-colour booklet for St. Matthews Anglican Church.

Peter himself was busy across New Norfolk, at the Rotary Club, the Masonic Lodge and as President of the Golf Club. He became Warden of the Derwent Valley for seven years, during which time the title switched to ‘Mayor.’

He even met, fell in love and married again. His second wife, coincidentally, was named Betty.

The first computer came to the business in 1980. It wasn’t very user friendly but the company moved into an era of printing where an entire page is photographed. “That changed printing forever,” says Peter.

While the business was sold as an ongoing concern to The Mercury newspaper in 1980, Peter continued to manage it for the next seven years.

Today, 96-year old Peter Howell has a comfortable apartment in a retirement village in Hobart, where a first class brain continues to tick over, and a memory for detail remains as sharp as it ever was.

He quizzes his interviewer from the Gazette about how the newspaper that he started 71 years ago came back into the Tasmanian hands of Font Publishing some five years ago.

Information is exchanged and photographs taken, and it becomes clear that the original printer-publisher of the Derwent Valley Gazette has slipped into that role one more time.