Tumby Bay newspaper deliverer to retire after 20 years of serving town 'rail, hail or shine'

Australia Broadcast Center

6 hours ago

When Wendy Russ tosses her last newspaper at the end of the month it will be the end of an era in Tumby Bay.
She has been the unofficial neighbourhood watch angel of the seaside town for about 20 years — the eyes and ears of the community in the dark of pre-dawn.
Ms Russ scooted around town in her little two-door hatchback with its "Toss" number plate, delivering newspapers seven days a week, every day of the year except Christmas Day.
There will be no more home newspaper deliveries in Tumby Bay after Ms Russ retires.
Her delivery service was the last one to operate in a small town on the Eyre Peninsula — however, deliveries will continue in the regional centre of Port Lincoln.
Every day for the past 20 years, Ms Russ has risen at 4:30am to start her deliveries, and in that time, she has only had three short breaks — two of them for medical reasons.
"Once was when I tore the tendons in my shoulder [throwing a paper]" she said.
Thirty-eight per cent of Tumby Bay's adult population is retirement age, with the town boasting 108 people over the age of 85 at the 2021 Census.
Shirley Bierwirth, 89, remembers having the newspaper delivered over the fence as a child and reads it daily.
She said Ms Russ did more than deliver her newspaper.
"She's been wonderful, when she saw me struggling to get the paper because I can't walk too well, she now comes right into the drive to drop the paper at my door," Mrs Bierwirth said.
Ms Russ has organised a volunteer to pick up papers from the shop for Mrs Bierwirth and other close-by neighbours.
"If they don't get Meals on Wheels, no-one sees them but if they get the paper every day, if I toss the paper, and I still see it there in the afternoon, I know something's wrong.
"I'll pop in or I'll ring one of the family and say, 'Is Mum alright? The paper's still out on the lawn', and they'll ring them and make sure things are okay."
Her early morning check-ins helped save another woman's life.
"I saw her light on and knocked and opened up the door, and there she was on the floor, and she'd been there all night," Ms Russ said.
"She'd fallen over at 5:30 the night before, and she couldn't get up, she'd broken her hip.
"She kept saying to me, 'You've saved my life.'
"It's lovely to have helped someone."
Ms Russ has reached retirement age, and so has the unviable business.
"When I first started, I needed room in my car for 525 Sunday Mails, and now I'm down to 120 papers for the whole town — that's how much it's dropped off," she said.
Her customer base halved when the freight changed from air to road, and the paper price went up by a dollar.
"That really affected our newspaper sales — my round dropped in half in two weeks, so I went from 150 customers down to about 60 customers and it never picked up," she said.
"Because most of my customers are in their 70s or 80s or 90s or hundreds — I don't get them replaced when they pass over.
She said the younger generation relied on social media news alerts.
"They don't want to sit and read about the whole story and the 50, 60-year-olds, they go digital and read it on their laptops," she said.
There was no question of anyone buying the paper round.
"I couldn't fudge those figures — it's just not viable," Ms Russ said.
"It's really been running as a charity for the past year."
She only earns 50 cents for each of the 30 papers she tosses daily (earning $15 a day), and 25c each for the 100 or so papers she drops at the newsagency.
"No one wants to get up at half past four in the morning to do an hour's work tossing 30-odd papers."
The 22-kilometre Tumby Bay round takes her an hour to do, with her trusted dog Rusty in the back of the car barking if she misses a house — a bit of a nuisance when a family is on holidays.
She has mastered her toss technique and has only landed two on roofs, after the wind took them.
The only other mishap was hitting the local doctor with the paper once.
Ms Russ is looking forward to sleeping in and working in her garden.
She will also be popping in to see many of the customers for a cuppa, just to check they're OK.