Happy birthday to a grand old dame

THE McIvor Times has a significant birthday coming up on Sunday, 2 April.

It turns 160 years old and there’ll be a special feature to mark this milestone in next week’s edition.

In 2013 former editor and proprietor Barry Cail reflected on the paper’s importance.

“The McIvor Times is much more to the Heathcote district community than simply a newspaper,” he wrote.

“It is part of the furniture, it is part of the culture, it is part of our everyday lives.”

The activities of Heathcote residents have been chronicled in its pages for 160 years; from political wrangling to births, weddings and funerals, and everything in between.

Find out about the early days when a local doctor launched the much-loved local newspaper at the tail end of the gold rush.

Discover how the business quickly branched out to provide a wide range of printed items.

Learn about changing technologies and how the McIvor Times has now moved into the digital age.

Readers are invited on a trip down memory lane to see what has altered, and what has stayed remarkably the same over the decades.