Border Post favourite eager to get one more dose of print

Former employee and loyal reader, Aileen Maher, won’t be missing the last print edition.

Aileen Maher looks back fondly a Border Post feature about her life. Picture: Matthew Purcell

EACH day in its long life, the Border Post office welcomed a variety of visitors and its fair share of characters, but few as beloved as Aileen Maher.

Approaching 92 years young, the former employee never missed a paper.

“The doctor can’t cure me. He can’t cure 91-itis,” Mrs Maher joked with her usual humour.

Every Tuesday and Thursday without fail, Mrs Maher would find her way to the office to get her dose of local news.

And every single time she would hit staff with the same question: “Am I in the death notices today?” As it happens, Mrs Maher outlived the printed death notices.

She worked at the paper, she thinks, from around 1945.

“I used to do all the accounts,” Mrs Maher said.

“Those were the days.

“When the paper was printed, all the staff had to go down to the printing machine and as they rolled off we had to fold them by hand.

“I only left the job because of the lights. My eyes were shocking at the time.”

While the last printed edition of the Border Post will roll out today, it will continue online.

But for some, such as Mrs Maher, the online world is a foreign beast.

“I haven’t got that sort of thing and I’m too old to learn it,” she said.

Aileen’s son, Sid Maher, is a news director at The Australian.

Her affinity for news obviously rubbed off.

Son, Sid Maher, just so happens to be the news director at The Australian.

His first foray into media was as a work experience student at the Border Post.

“He’s brighter than I am. He was the one who told me the Border Post print was finishing up.

“What’s Stanthorpe going to be like without the Tuesday and Thursday paper?

“It’s such a shame.

“I remember when I used to live at Liston, 100 years ago, as a little kid and they used to deliver the paper out to us there.”

In an article written by Sid Maher to celebrate the 140th anniversary of the Border Post, he made an apt point.

“A great newspaper editor once said a successful newspaper has to be a vital part of the conversation in its community.

“By that standard, the Stanthorpe Border Post is a successful newspaper,” he said.

The Border Post is changing, but it will remain vital and dedicated to the community.

Mrs Maher has promised she won’t miss the last print edition and hopefully, just one last time, she’ll pose that all-too-familiar question to staff.

“Am I in the death notices today?”

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