WONTHAGGI NEWSAGENCY & LOTTO For the Fleming family, customer service is in the blood - the Fleming name is synonymous with business in the Wonthaggi region. And despite the many ups and downs of business ownership, the family continues to support not only local customers, but other small businesses.
Her early grounding in small business put Fiona in good stead when she and her husband took over the contract with Consolidated Media Distributors to deliver newspapers on the Cowes run. Eventually, another business opportunity caught their eye.
Fiona Fleming first moved to Wonthaggi when she was just three years old, after her parents decided to chase a rural dream and shake off the urban expansion happening in Melbourne.
“We found out about the newsagency coming up for sale. At that stage Cowes came up, Wonthaggi came up and Inverloch came up within the space of 12 months of each other. We looked at it and went to dad and said this looks like a handy business to get into, so he gave us a hand with it and we ended up buying the newsagency while we still had the paper run.”
“They decided to get out of Melbourne because Melbourne was getting too developed,” Fiona explained. “We lived in Doncaster, and they were starting to bulldoze all of the orchards across from us and start to build, this was before the shopping town was built. “So, they decided we needed to get out of Melbourne, with my sister and I. They were looking for dairy farms around Gippsland and then the agent told them there was a Holden dealership going in Wonthaggi, complete with house. So, because he was already a mechanic, and cars were his trade, my dad’s ears pricked up.” Fiona’s dad moved on from his garage in Northcote, where he built and raced Austin 7s, and took over Wonthaggi’s Holden dealership from Lionel Curtain on April 17th, 1961. The family continued to run the dealership for 14 years, before a major health scare prompted her dad to look into new business ventures. He eventually bought the town’s taxi service and gas centre, with her parents sharing the load of both businesses. “So, I’ve grown up with business in the town.”
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With the sale approved by News Limited and Fairfax, Fiona and her husband took over the Wonthaggi Newsagency, which was at that time located in McBride Avenue. It was almost 50 years to the day since her family had taken over the Holden dealership – April 18th, 2011. They purchased the store just as the Desalination Plant was nearing completion, and the extra workers in the town kept the family on its toes. “Extremely busy. It was 5am starts, because of everybody getting ready to go off and work at the Desal.” But eventually, the huge number of construction workers left Wonthaggi, and what had always been the backbone of the business began to decline. “Newspapers have dropped off probably at least 50% at a guess. We just watched it drop over the years. More and more people are going online. News Limited have maintained their coverage, but more people are getting their news online.”
