Harold Edward Ostler Campbell bought his first newspaper after winning ten pounds in a Tattersalls sweep at the age of 22, becoming the youngest newspaper proprietor in NSW at the time.
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It would be the beginning of a career as a newspaper owner and editor which finished with his retirement from the Examiner in 1975.
Mr Campbell bought the then Raymond Terrace Examiner in 1967 from the Brown family and transformed the paper in two vital ways.
He was one of the first publishers to turn to offset printing and free distribution - a decision which led to the Examiner's growth.
Prior to offset printing, the newspaper had been using a flatbed press which limited how many pages could be printed. By 1999 the Examiner's distribution had grown to 24,400.
Mr Campbell's son Keith, the Examiner's editor from 2004 -11, remembers his father changing the paper as the region grew.
"In those days it was a traditional country newspaper when he bought it in 1967," he said.
"You started printing on Friday for your Wednesday edition which was the flatbed press out the back. He saw if the paper was going to grow you needed more capacity, if he's going to add more pages.
"He went to offset and turned it into free distribution and started to home deliver here on the Tomaree Peninsula."
Born in the Collie area in 1899, H.E.O Campbell joined the Gilgandra Weekly as a 13-year-old 'printer's devil' or apprentice.
He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force at 17, serving two years in World War I where he saw action as a gunner in France.
After the war he took the editor's job at the Mudgee Mail and in 1922 returned to Gilgandra to buy the Weekly.
In the next two decades Mr Campbell expanded his newspaper chain to eight weeklies throughout western NSW.
Away from the office, Mr Campbell was also a talented golfer, managing and captaining the first Australian professional golf team to tour America in 1936.
He was president of the NSW Country Press Council from 1953-55 and a founding member of the Gilgandra RSL.
In 1955 he sold all of his newspapers except the Nyngan Observer and retired to a hobby farm at Mulgoa near Penrith.
In 1967 Mr Campbell re-entered the newspaper game, launching the Nepean Herald and buying the Raymond Terrace-focused Examiner.
"He didn't like retirement so on a whim one day he bought the Examiner off the Brown family and moved north," Keith Campbell said.
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