The Hull Packet

4 October 1803

Botany Bay - We are in possession of seven of the first Newspapers printed at Botany Bay. - These Papers, although printed in a style that 40 years ago would have seemed elegant in this country, are not noticed as literary productions, but as the first essay of a colony. It is now 18 years since the first establishment was made in New South Wales. It appears clearly from the Botany Bay papers that the state of society at this colony is already greatly advanced. Public sales, articles, lost and found, and even servants wanted, and articles of millinery and jewellery, and all other such matters, are advertised in the same manner as in the most wealthy English settlements.