The Central Western Daily is this month celebrating 75 years since its first edition hit the streets of Orange only weeks after the guns of World War II had fallen silent.

In 1945 when the CWD was born Orange's population was barely a quarter of what it is now.

Its essentially-rural economy had been boosted with the opening of a small arms factory for the war effort in Edward Street in 1942.

Two tri-weekly newspapers, the Orange Leader and the Orange Advocate, amalgamated after the war ended to become the CWD.

Historian Liz Edwards, in her book A Gentleman of the Inky Way said production was shared between the two former newspapers' offices on either side of Lords Place before being consolidated on the western side in what is now Alfios Pizzeria.

The first edition of the daily newspaper, consisting of four broadsheet pages, had a wide range of news.

About 600 workers, described as "angry men and women" at the previously-mentioned munitions factory were up in arms at the government's plans to start dismissing staff no longer needed with the end of the war.

Suggestions included using the factory to make bicycles rather than sack the staff.

Within months the factory would become the Emmco, and later Electrolux, company.

There was plenty of post-war news as forces began mopping up opposition in south-east Asia.

Locally the amazing skill of farming instructor Frank Hart was front page news.

"He dazzled an audience of nearly 300 at the Fairbridge Farm at Molong last Friday by killing, plucking, cleaning and trussing a fowl in 30 seconds," the paper said.

"He did everything but eat this fowl in thirty seconds," the headline claimed.

Advertisements for Helena Rubenstein's lipstick, Punch's chemist's cough balsam and health salts, White's pharmacy and Bruce Small's Summer Street bicycle shop were prominent.

Sports news of the day centred on a forecast heavy track for Randwick horse races and the opening weekend of the Orange cricket season.

Three A-grade games were played over the weekend with Nashdale dismissed by Mental Hospital for 176 while Railway was playing SAF and Pinnacle Road was up against Rovers.

The weather was just as topical then with the District News Flashes section recording snow and rain at Guyong.

Another topic to make news later in the paper's first week was a call for Orange to have a new aerodrome.

However, that would not occur for another 16 years.

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