The Sydney Morning Herald's first twenty years of news reporting is publicly available online through the National Library of Australia's Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program. Issues from 1831-1842 have been digitised. Later issues will become available over the next few weeks. The Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation made a major financial contribution towards the digitisation of the Sydney Morning Herald.
The Melbourne newspaper The Argus has also been digitised and made publicly available online. Issues from 1946-1945 are available on the website. Later issues will be added in 2010.
With the digitisation of these two newspapers the ANDP team has improved researchers' access to Australian social and political history from the last millenium.
Newspapers on the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program are fully text searchable. They are also discoverable by Google News's Archival search.