Field note
Gazette notices and the clock they start
A notice in the gazette is not a newspaper curiosity. It is often the first day of a period in which an objection, a caveat, or a claim must be lodged.
People bring us a clipping as if the paper itself were the legal act. The act is the notice, published on a day, in a form the statute required. The clipping is evidence of that day, if the masthead and the page are intact. A photograph of a paragraph, cropped of its date, is a rumour.
Clocks we see started by gazette include objections to a heritage listing, notices that a dealing will be registered unless a caveat is lodged, and calls for claims against a company that is about to leave a roll. The number of days is in the statute or the notice, not in our preference for a tidy fortnight.
If you are the person who should have objected, and the days have run, we will say so. A late objection dressed as a “reading” is still late. If the days have not run, the work is a calendar, a standing check, and a lodging that meets the form. That is Contested Entry Support in a hurry, and it should be telephoned, not left on the enquiry form over a weekend.
Keep the whole page. Keep the issue date. If the notice refers to a plan, a folio, or a file number, keep that too. We cannot reconstruct a gazette from a memory of having seen it on a colleague’s screen.