[1] In September 1894 Robert Moss, said by Bennett to have been the proprietor of the earlier Advertiser, began publishing The Mountaineer in Main Street Katoomba (near the Family Hotel).
The paper circulated “throughout the Blue Mountain and Hartley Districts”.
At the end of 1894 Moss sold the paper to Peter Giles Hart who remained its publisher until May 1904 when he passed it on to his brother-in-law John Knight.
At the end of 1908 The Mountaineer was sold by Knight to a new public company, “The Mountaineer Printing and Publishing Company, Ltd.”, whose board of directors was made up of a number of well-known local businessmen.
This company planned to publish a new paper “much enlarged of an entirely different character, and in keeping with the needs and requirements of the rapidly rising places on the Mountains”.