 Digger newspapers of the first world war Graham Seal's survey of first world war diggers newspapers |
Category 3 Journals
Journals in the third category were generally produced on printing presses, with journalistic expertise and the official blessing of the AIF's hierarchy. They contained photographs and a variety of other illustrative and graphic forms. Such sophistication was rare, though not unknown, in the second category publications. The best known of the third category publications are Aussie and Kia-Ora Cooee.10
Less well known are the Digger and the magazine that grew out of Honk - the Rising Sun11 Printed 'Somewhere in France', the Rising Sun claimed to be' A Journal of the AIF in France' and was first published on Christmas Day 1916. It included the usual fare of the trench paper -some Australian news, some general and sporting news, anecdotes, humour and parodies of advertisements. It also carried verse, including some that had not made it into The Anzac book, like this reasonably typical piece of poetic homesickness by 'Pip':I am standing in the trenches with the mud up to my knees
And I'm thinking of the bushland far away;
Where we used to gallop madly through the gum and wattle trees;
And the horse I used to ride -the Dapple Grey.
And the girl with eyes a gleaming, way along the winding track,
And the stillness, and the lonely Mopoke's cry;
Oh, I'm longing for the Bushland, and the sun on my old shack,
And the girl I left behind in Gundagai 12
In February 1917, the Rising Sun published C.J. Dennis's 'Why Mick went to War' from his best-selling The moods of Ginger Mick. Clearly the resources of this paper were some way above those of the first and second category, though the functions of all these publications were the same -as were their readers, the by-now distinctive figure of the 'digger'.
 
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