Regarded as "the father of the Shoalhaven press", Watson was 36 years of age when he published the first edition of the News, Shoalhaven on February 2, 1867.

By that time he had a decade of experience in newspapers, which he entered after completing a basic education.

For many years he was said to have been born in Windsor, and this was stated by his son in a Shoalhaven history prepared by his son (Charles John Boden Watson) in 1904 and published by Woodhills the following year.

A century after Charles Isaac's death, his great grand-daughter Babette Smith discovered that he had in fact been born at the "Female Factory" at Parramatta where his convict mother was located.

From her research and using a collection of letters written by her great great-grandmother, Ms Smith wrote the best selling book, "A Cargo of Women: Susannah Watson and the Convicts of the Princess Royal".

The fact that Charles was the illegitimate son of a convict did not deter him, and even before he was 20 he was working as a journalist and printer - boasting the skills required to produce a paper on his own.

With this experience behind him, he joined the throngs who tried their luck on the goldfields of Victoria and New South Wales, firstly as a digger but later he went back to his profession.

While producing a paper read by miners at Kiandra in the early 1850s, snow blocked the roads and Watson was soon out of news print.

He overcame this by printing on calico which was collected after the news had been read by his subscribers, washed and then printed on again.

Years later he was again forced to improvise when floodwaters inundated his Terara office, and The News was brought out using green ink and on one occasion brown paper.

Watson established many newspapers during his career, firstly The Australian at Windsor, and later the Braidwood Dispatch.

In 1859 Braidwood became the first provincial town in NSW to have a daily paper which Watson published six days a week for about six months.

After working in many places, Watson decided to settle down when he came to the Shoalhaven and through The News became involved in many aspects of community life.

His death in 1886 at a relatively young age can be attributed to injuries sustained when he heroically sought to save a young lady from being run down by a horse that had bolted with a rail of fence swinging from its halter.

Obituaries claimed that he held the records for establishing more newspapers than any other person in Australia, and also for the greatest number of libel suits as a result of his outspokenness.