By CASEY NEILL
ONE of Ken Grenda’s earliest memories is sitting on the cabin roof of his father’s milk truck in the 1930s watching flood waters from Dandenong Creek lapping the Dandenong Town Hall steps.
“Grenda’s were a milk truck business from 1924 until 1945, with George Grenda starting with one truck and finishing with 14 trucks at its sale,” he said.
“Milk in cans was conveyed from dairy farms roughly between Oakleigh and Pakenham to metropolitan dairies.
“Suburbia finished at Oakleigh and Dandenong was a country market town.”
Ken said George sold the trucks in 1945 and bought six buses and four bus routes – Dandenong to Oakleigh, Dandenong to Beaconsfield, Dandenong to Chelsea and Dandenong to Cheltenham.
Lance and Ken Grenda joined the business about 1950.
“In the mid ’50s Dandenong became Australia’s fastest growth centre with the coming of three big manufacturers in General Motors Holden (GMH), International Trucks and HJ Heinz,” Ken said.
“The growth that followed caused Dandenong to transition from a market town with saddlery shops in Lonsdale Street – and even cattle being driven down Lonsdale Street to the cattle market on the corner of Cleeland and Clow Streets – to a manufacturing centre.”
Heinz, GMH and International were built after World War II as part of a large-scale government building project to move people to the eastern suburbs.
Former Heinz employee Don Poole said many other factories were built shortly after, as well as smaller businesses that supplied the factories with food and materials.
Heinz closing its doors in 2000 was “like the end of an era”.
“For those who worked there it was like being part of a big family. A lot of lifelong friendships were forged during their time there,” Mr Poole said.
Dandy Hams and Bacon, too, fostered mateship and its neon Dandy Pig sign erected in the 1950s on Lonsdale Street welcomed the traffic that crossed Foster Street from Gippsland.
Forty years ago, Gerry Ryan started what would become Australia’s largest recreational vehicles manufacturer.
Jayco today employs 1000 people in Dandenong South – a long way from the eight people Gerry had making one camper trailer a day in 1975.
Ron Anson established transport company Nordon almost 60 years ago.
“Dandenong has now become a very big industrial centre, possibly the biggest manufacturing hub in Australia,” he said.
And despite the car industry’s collapse, the region’s manufacturing may continue to grow.
Businesses are focusing on collaboration, value-adding and innovation to stay relevant.
The Dandenong on Wheels event earlier this year highlighted the buses, trams, trains, trucks and other vehicle items manufactured in Dandenong.
But the industry’s depth seems endless – tow bars, medical gadgets, defence equipment, 3D printing and much more are all in a day’s work in Dandy and surrounds.
