Greeba Hoskin (1920-2012)

Journalist. RHSV Director

Journalist Greeba Hoskin was born in the Melbourne suburb of Armadale, the only child of architect St Lawrence Jamison and his wife Daisy Ireland.

She joined the Argus as a cadet reporter in 1939 after completing her schooling at Firbank Grammar. In 1946 she began work at the Age as a general news reporter and a decade later became its women’s ‘editress’, a position she held until late 1967 when she and her master mariner husband Sydney (whom she married in 1957) resigned from their jobs to travel the world. On their return, she freelanced, writing general news articles, book reviews and features, often on historical subjects, for the Age and for Walkabout magazine.

After her husband’s death in 1970 she was devastated, suffered from depression for years and did not return to journalism. In 1973 she became Director of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, replacing Marcia Maxwell, the Society’s first Director, who had retired. It was a brief appointment. She resigned in September 1973 on account of continuing ill-health.

Books became her ‘lifeline and companions’ and from 1974 to 1994 she lectured on writers and travel for the CAE. When she died in 2012, her will created the Greeba Jamison Perpetual Charitable Trust, to encourage literacy in young people.

Journalist Sally White summed up the contribution of this ‘last old-style women’s “editress’ in the Sydney Morning Herald, 17 May 2012. Greeba Jamison Hoskin was, White wrote, ‘A woman journalist for the times’.

Kaleidoscope exhibition text by Cheryl Griffin, February 2022. Full entry to follow.