Journal reporter RUSSELL BENNETT talks to his grandmother, Gwen Jarvis (widow of former mayor Maurie Jarvis, and one of the City of Greater Dandenong’s Living Treasures) about her memories of the town in which she built a life for the family.
SOME of my favourite childhood memories stem from my grandparents’ old double-storey, brick house on Jones Road in Dandy West.
It’s the house they raised my mother and her three sisters in, and was the centre of our family’s universe for decades.
We’ve long been spread across the state, but when we all came together as one, giant family it was at grandma and grandpa’s.
It’s been a while – many years in fact – since my grandma has lived there. Grandpa passed away in 2003, with grandma then moving into the Valley Village Mews on Stud Road and then, ultimately, out to Pakenham where she currently lives.
She’s 92 years old now but her memories of what made the area so great in her eyes are still as vivid as ever.
“I loved the centre of Dandenong because that’s where Maurie was in and around council,” grandma told me recently.
“Mainly where the city offices were and the park all around there.
“Seeing the shopping centre develop was nice too but I grew out of that in the finish because I couldn’t get myself around as well.”
But from what I could gather, grandma’s love of the city never stemmed from anything made out of bricks or mortar
“All the contacts we had were great,” grandma said.
“We had so many contacts that when I stopped going to events, people wanted to make a fuss that I’d been in a lot of things, but I didn’t want that attention.
“All the friends we had were great – they were my life. The people there were all good to me, and I was good to them. That was a part of my happiness; the contact with all my friends there.”
Grandpa came home with a copy of the Journal every week – not just for he and grandma to forensically examine, but for the rest of the family as well. My guess is that it was a way for them to make sure the family was still connected to the town.
“We read everything in it,” grandma said.
“Maurie always made a dash for the sport at the back and I made a dash – if I could get the paper from him – for the news.
“We had one of the leading newspapers, and following what the news said if we went out we could always quote from the various stories what was happening in Dandenong and the surrounding district.
“All the Dandenong people could – where else would we get our information?”
