By RUSSELL BENNETT
Gwen Jarvis was born in Dandenong and lived there for more than 85 years. In that time, she saw a small country town transform into a bustling multicultural city and the Dandenong Journal was there every step of the way. Gwen’s grandson, Star News Group reporter Russell Bennett, sat down with this living treasure to talk about how Victoria’s oldest local newspaper has grown with its community.
OBJECTIVITY; local stories about local people; promoting everything the city has to offer and a fair go for all its residents, regardless of their cultural background – that’s what 91-year-old Dandenong Living Treasure Gwen Jarvis thinks of when talking about the Dandenong Journal.
Gwen was front-and-centre with her late husband and three-time Dandenong mayor Maurie, as one of Australia’s great multicultural cities evolved from a small country town.
“It was a place where everybody from Gippsland and all around the place came to build a new life,” she said.
“For them, the Journal was communication in its purest form – it had everything and gave the people everything.”
For Gwen, it started with Greg Dickson – a long-time Journal editor and close friend.
“He was on all the committees we were on,” Gwen said.
“He’d help get everything into the paper that would, or could, affect local people.
“They said Dandenong was illiterate and didn’t understand good music. This was in the ’50s and ’60s.
“But we had a group of people who were ex-teachers and mothers like me, and Greg and the Journal played an active role in changing people’s opinions.”
Mr Dickson even bought artworks entered in a music and arts festival, which he hung in his family home.
Gwen also remembers the seemingly endless projects Maurie and the council sponsored in his three stints as mayor.
“The Journal loved him because he’d do whatever they wanted him to – whether it was open a building, or go to a school … he’d just go to where the people asked him and they all knew Maurie Jarvis,” she said.
“Wallara (disability support service for adults) was started in our living room in 1959, for example.”
For the people, by the people – it was a proven winner for Dandenong and its residents.
“Marg Stork went to high school with me – in my form,” Gwen said.
“With her, the Journal was all about the people.
“People always said it was their reference to everything that was going on in Dandenong.
“In our years, everything was happening – migrants were coming, new schools were being built, the whole place went from a tiny little town.
“Maurie was mayor during that expansion and the Journal wrote everything up – from the Scout Jamboree in 1977 to when Mr Heinz from the Heinz company came to visit the factory on the highway.”
While Dandenong today is often stigmatised by those outside the city, Gwen said the Journal played a huge role correcting those misconceptions.
“There are 120 languages – I think – spoken in the City of Greater Dandenong now.
“You get a lot of bad stories in the press about these people who’ve come here, but I want to read about the good stories,” Gwen said.
“The Cook Islanders, Fijians, Sri Lankans and South Africans put an endless amount of work into the Uniting Church that we went to, for example.
“Maurie, and now the current councillors, have all tried to see that the groups of people who come in from overseas are treated equally,” she said.
“A lot of the negative publicity wasn’t actually factual, and people like to read about what’s actually happening.
“The Journal was great at presenting the facts. We’d never read something and have to question whether or not they were telling the truth.”
