THE Greater Dandenong community farewelled a number of civic stalwarts during 2014, none more loyal and dedicated to the city she loved than veteran Journal reporter Marg Stork.
Marg, as she was affectionately known, died on Tuesday 10 June after a short illness. She was 91.
Remarkably Marg never retired, contributing her popular Moment with Marg column right up until an illness hospitalised her.
“It’s the people who make it such an enjoyable job,” Marg was quoted as saying in a tribute to her career published on the Journal’s 140th birthday in 2005.
Her father Rowland Archer bought his 10-year-old daughter her first typewriter at Dandenong Market.
Marg started her career as an honorary correspondent with the Journal when she was just 15 and still a student at Dandenong High School.
Her round was social news from Hallam, Hampton Park, Cranbourne and Lyndhurst where she lived on her parents’ property ‘Ryecroft’.
She was put on the Journal payroll in 1940 at 10 shillings a week.
“In those days I was jack of all trades,” she recalled.
“I swept the office in the mornings and used to dive for cover when the district stock and station agents drove cows and calves along Scott Street on their way to the old stock market behind the council building in Clow Street.
“I rode my bike to get stories and did a regular news round walking the streets of Dandenong.
“I would call at W.J. Garner funeral services, then in Walker Street, the Beau Mond factory near the station, to the schools, the churches and real estate offices.”
Not even the birth of daughter Melvena could keep Marg from her news rounds. The baby went along in her pram as Marg visited contacts around the streets of Dandenong.
Marg married twice, and nursed Melvena until her daughter tragically lost a battle with cancer in 2010.
Marg was delighted when the Journal was purchased by the family-owned Star News Group in 2013 and her beloved paper was returned to tabloid size and the focus was once again on community news.
“I have watched the Journal grow from small beginnings … I hope it never loses its true role, that of a community newspaper,” said the City of Greater Dandenong Living Treasure.
The city lost another Living Treasure with the passing of Stuart Marriner. The 95-year-old former Rat of Tobruk died on 13 October.
Mr Marriner was an active environmentalist spearheading the effort of Residents Against Toxic Waste in the South East (RATWISE) to shut down the Lyndurst toxic waste dump.
Fellow member Geraldine Gonsalvez said Mr Marriner was “the environmental watchdog for Dandenong”.
RATWISE convened at Stuart and his late wife Jean’s home behind Dandenong High School until he moved to Apollo Bay in 2011.
Mr Marriner was born in the Otway Ranges in 1918 and came to Dandenong with his family in 1959 to access education.
He worked for Southeastern Timber until he retired in 1978.
He became ‘honorary grandfather’ to many children at the Doveton-Hallam Community Centre, a valuable asset to the Dandenong District Benevolent Society and successfully lobbied the council to provide facilities for homeless youths.
Others who were farewelled in 2014 included former Dandenong High School teacher Bea Boardman, charity worker Pat Blashki, musician Joyce Taylor, Scout leader Bill Brookes, former Dandenong mayors Ken Allan and David Kelly and founder of the Sandown Football Club Fred Esdaile.
