What’s In a Name delves into the fascinating stories and personalities behind some of the city’s best-known street names and locations. This week the Journal looks at central Dandenong’s Dickson Lane, off Scott Street.
Journal editor Greg Dickson was a fresh-faced “boy from the Mallee” in 1939 when he bought the newspaper that would become his passion and his legacy.
At his funeral 54 years later, former Dandenong mayor Maurie Jarvis described Greg as “one of Dandenong’s best-loved citizens ever”.
“He earned the respect of the community because he was always so unassuming, so quietly efficient and he was always ready to give freely of himself in the service to our community,” he said at the time.
He then joked that he would rush to grab the first Journal each Wednesday morning “so I could read exactly what I had said in the council chamber at the previous meeting”.
Greg was an old-style editor/proprietor: he wrote stories, subbed copy, laid out the newspaper, got ink under his nails manning the printing presses and helped distribute the finished product.
He inherited his love of newspapers from his mother, Flora.
Flora and Alfred Dickson bought the Ouyen and North West Express, a small paper in the heart of the Mallee, in 1918. When Alfred fell ill and died several years later, Flora took over.
At age 13, Greg was already honing his craft writing all the sports reports for the Express and by 14 he was Ouyen Racing Club’s acting assistant secretary.
Greg eventually left school to help his mother full-time at the Express.
When Flora sold the paper in late 1938, Greg decided to buy his own. William Bennett was ready to sell the Journal.
“Every reporter hopes for the day when he might have his own paper and run it the way he thinks it should be run,” Greg wrote when he retired as editor in 1964.
“I was lucky – I set out to buy a paper in Yarrawonga and wound up buying one in Dandenong!”
Greg and his wife Daphne were married in Ouyen in 1939, shortly before they moved to Dandenong.
Daphne, a nurse who was fondly known as Zig, and Greg became a formidable team at the Journal.
Zig became one of the “backroom boys” helping to run the big press that printed the Journal at the rear of the Scott Street office and carrying heavy bundles of papers.
The Journal’s circulation was 950 when Greg bought it. By 1961 paid circulation had grown to 6500, making it one of the largest circulating provincial newspapers in Victoria.
Greg sold the Journal to Rupert Murdoch’s Cumberland Newspaper Group in 1961, staying on as editor.
He ‘retired’ in 1964 but continued contributing news, sporting and social items to the paper until his death in 1993.
