"The Dispatch is the best country paper in the north of South Australia," claimed the publisher of the Port Augusta dispatch in 1905 (13 January 1905, p. 1). "With the exception of the Adelaide dailies the Dispatch has the most extensive territorial circulation of any journal in the colony," was stated a few years earlier (14 July 1899, p. 4). Certainly the huge number of settlements far and wide, large and small, that were covered in the columns of this newspaper - particularly in its early years -are impressive. The Port Augusta dispatch was founded shortly after the incorporation of the town of Port Augusta in 1875. The young township was then progressing in leaps and bounds, and the people wanted a newspaper. In particular, it was felt that a newspaper would help make the opinions of the people of the mid-north better known to decision-makers in Adelaide. The columns of the Dispatch were packed with the news of the multitude of tiny communities that spread around Port Augusta, and the 'Adelaide letter' column provided detailed news from the capital. Local sport in the form of cricket, chess and rifle shooting was reported. The newspaper's printer, Drysdale, was captain in the volunteer militia, and a member of the local rifle club, which ensured coverage of these bodies in the paper. Football does not seem to rate a mention until the early 1900s. As well as the farming community, the activities of the port were well represented, in such reports as those describing the controversial wharf extensions in 1882, the call to build smelters in the town in 1898, and also the behaviour of visiting sailors - as represented in the court reports. For a brief period in 1901 a social column, 'Town gossip by Dolly Pertinax', appeared. The quality of the newspaper fell in the decades before its demise, although for the short period that Drysdale re-purchased the Dispatch in 1915, various improvements were made.

The Port Augusta dispatch was founded in 1877 by a company headed by Thomas Burgoyne. Burgoyne was the Town Clerk of Port Augusta, as well as editor and manager of the newspaper. H.J. White followed Burgoyne as editor for a time and between 1893 and 1895 John Waters Kirwan was editor. The printer of the Dispatch was David Drysdale, a young Victorian. Drysdale was to be connected with the Dispatch for almost 40 years. He was an experienced printer, having worked for various newspapers in Castlemaine and Melbourne before coming to the Dispatch. From 1880 to 1910 Drysdale was sole owner of the newspaper. He sold to R.L. Abbott, but following Abbott's death, Drysdale re-purchased the newspaper in October 1915. Three months later the Dispatch was sold again, to Emrys Rhys-Jones and Sydney Dew. It ceased shortly afterwards in February 1916. An interesting double-page coloured lithographic supplement depicting scenes in and around Port Augusta, prepared by Rider and Mercer of Ballarat, Victoria was published with the issue of 28 October 1892.