Category: News & Events

Evolution of Buses on the Mont Park Route

Early Deepdene to Mont Park bus
A popular bus service ran between Kew and the Mont Park hospital site via Ivanhoe station.
By August 1950 Route 49a had very good service frequencies:
Monday to Friday: 7:00 am-9:00 am 15 minutes, 9:00 am-1:00 pm 20 minutes, 1:00 pm-6:00 pm 15 minutes, 6:00 pm-12:00 am 20 minutes.
Saturday: 6:30 am-6:00 pm 15 minutes, 6:00 pm-12:00 am 20 minutes.
Sunday: A single morning service extended to Camberwell Station then 1:00 pm-4:00 pm 10 minutes, 4:00 pm-6:00 pm 15 minutes, 6:00 pm-12:00 am 20 minutes. Sunday afternoon was the busiest period with all the hospital visitors.
Bell Street January 1955 waiting for Sunday afternoon
These frequencies required 10 buses to service the route.
Photo at Camberwell Station with driver Charles Craig 1946 in the traditional bus driver’s dustcoat, driving the 1946 International KS 9 with Symons and Fowler body
In 1952 the bus company was owned by Claude Moriarty and Bill Molan – all of the bus maintenance was done ‘in house’ with great speed and skill to ensure there was minimal service inconvenience. Passengers transferred to a waiting bus at the depot and the repaired bus was back on the road in 20 minutes.
Bus outside M & M Motors
Bus ZA281 1952 Vulcan-Bedford with Symons and Fowler body
1957 Bus – GRH795
Bus in 1975 KGV 359 Bedford VAM70-Comair
Bus in 1998 PC1001 Volgreen bodied Dennis F Dart SLF

Acknowledgements go to Alan Greenhill for information gleaned from his article on the Ivanhoe Bus Service in the Australian Bus Panorama, Vol 21 Special Edition December 2005.
Thanks also to Paul Kennelly of The Bus and Coach Society of Victoria Incorporated for provision of the photos of the earlier buses, and Graham Goeby for collating the information and photos, and this review of the evolution of buses on the Mont Park to Cotham Road route.
See related posts: History of the Mont Park and Gresswell bus service
On the Buses

History of the Mont Park and Gresswell Bus Service

With the growing need for staff and visitors to get to the rather remote Mont Park Hospital and the fact that few people owned motor cars, a bus Route (49a) that was established in November 1926 from Deepdene (corner Cotham and Bourke Roads) was extended (from Darebin Street, Heidelberg) northwards in February 1935 to service Mont Park and the Gresswell Sanatorium.
Photo at Camberwell Station with driver Charles Craig 1946, driving an 1946 International K5
The operator was B&R Jones Bros, who traded as Heidelberg Motor Omnibus Company Pty Ltd. Their depot was at 130 Plenty Rd Heidelberg (since renamed to Upper Heidelberg Road). In 1938 the Jones brothers sold their business and 537 Upper Heidelberg depot to T. Gordon Brown, and he sold to Claude Moriarty and Bill Molan in May 1952 who later traded as Mont Park – Cotham Rd Bus Service and by May 1957 had formed the Ivanhoe Bus Company. From 1956 the livery changed to give a yellow body, cream roof and green band and mudguards. Ownership passed to Ventura Bus Lines in June 2010.
By August 1950 Route 49a had very good service frequencies each day and 10 buses serviced the route.
Despite necessary fare increases, the services were so popular that overcrowding became a problem, particularly on Sundays. The Argus of 17/8/1952 reported that Police got involved to deal with overloading of buses because there were so many visitors to the Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital and Mont Park Hospitals.

The bus company suffered a major setback in the early hours of 14th November 1955 when a suspicious fire caused damage to the garage with 8 buses being damaged, 3 seriously (this followed an earlier fire on 30th of January 1950 in which 7 buses were destroyed). Claude Moriarty had borrowed enough buses from friends in the industry that by the time of the first service of the morning not one service was missed. During the reconstruction of the depot a car showroom was added and West Heidelberg (M &M) Motors came into being.
Bell Street January 1955 waiting for Sunday afternoon services
By 1959, television (meaning people didn’t go out as much for entertainment) and greater car ownership was beginning to effect patronage and some rationalisation was necessary and the West Heidelberg portion of the Mont Park route was altered to what it is today.
In the mid 60s the ‘off peak’ services were reduced to half hourly, evenings to 40 minutes and Sunday service from Camberwell station was withdrawn. Route 49a was renumbered to 547 in 1971 with the branch service to La Trobe University renumbered to 548. In the late 1980s many 548 trips extended into Mont Park effectively forming a loop service with 547.
All of the bus maintenance was done inhouse and clutch replacements were a frequent requirement with some of the drivers being quite hard on their transmissions. With the services being so busy, a bus would pull up outside the depot, the passengers would be transferred to a waiting bus and the team would swing into action, pulling up the floorboards inside the bus to attach slings to hold the gear box while it was unbolted from the engine and the clutch replaced. Incredibly the bus would be back on the road in just 20 minutes, ready to run the next service.
In 1966, a deviation of Route 49a began servicing the new La Trobe University, with morning and evening services. University students and staff travelled via Mont Park grounds in the new loop with a popular stop at Ivanhoe station on the way back to Burke Rd and Cotham Rd.
An Ivanhoe to La Trobe University bus 1975
In December 2001, route 547 ceased because Mont Park Hospital had closed. As La Trobe University was expanding, Route 548 became the main route and an hourly extension was added for the Lancaster Gate housing estate in the old Larundel Hospital grounds.
Acknowledgements go to Graham Goeby for collating information and photographs, Alan Greenhill for information gleaned from his article on the Ivanhoe Bus Service in the Australian Bus Panorama Volume 21 Special Edition December 2005.
Thanks also to Paul Kennelly of The Bus and Coach Society of Victoria Incorporated for provision of the photographs.
Newspaper “clippings” are from Trove (an online service of the National Library of Australia).

See related posts. ‘On the Buses‘- reminiscences from a former bus driver
plus: Evolution of Buses on the Mont Park Route

On the Buses

The Mont Park to Springthorpe Heritage Group were lucky to meet with Kel, a Macleod resident who worked as a bus driver in the 1950s on the 49a Bus Route which brought passengers into Mont Park from Cotham Rd Kew via Ivanhoe station.
Kel began driving buses in 1954 and started on the Mont Park route in 1955. He was one of the youngest drivers for the Ivanhoe Bus Company (and was given a special permit to drive below the official age). Kel describes the bus route to Mont Park as busy, with many visitors travelling through the week, and even more on the weekends. It was a pleasant drive along Waiora Rd, then Springthorpe Boulevard to where the bus turned around at the ‘Gresswell Gates’ in Wattle Ave (now the corner of Main Drive and Springthorpe Boulevard). These gates were at the bottom of the hill leading up to the Gresswell Sanatorium (for Tuberculosis patients) and Macleod Repatriation Hospitals. On visiting days the bus went into these hospitals, continuing north to stop at Gresswell with its many verandas first, then east to the Macleod Repatriation Hospital.
The bus route drove over the railway line, which was a branch line from Macleod station, built to bring coal from Maddingley Bacchus Marsh Brown Coal mine by train up to the Mont Park site (the same train delivered coal to the APM mill in Fairfield). The coal was used to provide heating for the hospitals and laundry. A bill was passed in Parliament in December 1946 to provide a passenger service on this railway line into Mont Park, but that passenger service never eventuated, so the yellow buses remained the only public transport into the area. This railway line ceased operation in 1964.
The only negative part of the site which reminded Kel that it was a strict hospital was the tall cyclone wire fences around some of the buildings, where these patients were confined. He made a special effort to ensure that the nurses were dropped off safely at night.
Entrance to Gresswell 1946 with visitors to Administration building in the distance
Other visitors from all over Melbourne caught the train to Macleod station and walked up the Cherry Street hill, past the gum trees of the Avenue of Honour planted in the 1920s by the Mont Park patients who were military veterans. See The Avenue of Honour | Mont Park to Springthorpe
Everyone wanted to get on the Bus … !
Many patients were trusted and free to wander around the Mont Park site amongst the tall gums, palms and pine trees and the gardens of exotic shrubs and flowers. The first stop was at the Kiosk which was near the current Springthorpe Country Club site. Some of the patients were waiting here for their families and could share a cuppa and cakes supplied by the Ladies Auxiliary. See Ada Wilkinson | Mont Park to Springthorpe. Sometimes patients, called the ‘trusties’, tried to board the bus back to Ivanhoe, but the drivers would alert the care attendants who were available to gently escort them off the bus before it left the site.
The Kiosk which would have been on the right hand side of the road, now called Springthorpe Boulevard where the Country Club is now located
Buses in those days were friendly, crowded spaces with the driver distributing tiny paper tickets from a rotating dispenser, with a modest fee of around 5 pence (5 cents) or 1 shilling (10 cents). Passengers sometimes stood in the aisles when it was busy, but needed to hang on tightly as there were no doors on the steps at the front of the bus.
Kel recalls many young families moving into the Olympic Village area of Heidelberg after the Games in 1956. Mums and young children in prams needed help to negotiate the bus steps and front door, when they travelled to the closest shops at Ivanhoe. Sometimes they would get Kel to drop a load of shopping back at their home (he knew each person’s house), when they had a particularly large shopping list. He would then pick up the ladies and their next load of shopping later in the day.
Such a kind and handy service! From 1967 when the Mont Park – Ivanhoe bus route came to incorporate a loop up Kingsbury Drive through La Trobe University to serve the students at the new University, many of us became very familiar with daily commutes on the yellow Ivanhoe bus.
Sincere thanks to Kel and Graham who met with us in July 2023 to talk about this article. SEE further articles about the buses –Evolution of Buses on the Mont Park Route plus: History of the Mont Park and Gresswell Bus Service

Reverend Roy Algernon Bradley OAM at Mont Park

Reverend Bradley worked at Mont Park and Larundel in the early 1960s. He was widely admired.
While at these hospitals he learned of a Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) program available in USA and went to train in CPE in the USA in 1964-1965, on a Fulbright scholarship. He came back and founded the Australia and New Zealand CPE at the Austin Hospital in Heidelberg, Victoria in 1967. Rev Drew Lelean (See, Reverend Drew Lelean – staff member at Larundel Mental Hospital | Mont Park to Springthorpe ) and other chaplains were trained by Roy in the 1970s. Roy went on to train people in this important work in Perth Darwin, Hobart, Ballarat, Albury and Warrnambool.
CPE practitioners aim to observe, understand and then help clients in hospitals, prisons and those who are ageing either in care, or at home. The aims are to provide practical support and information to relieve people’s anxiety and stress.
Family Life
Roy Algernon Bradley (b.1926) grew up in Box Hill attending Box Hill High School from 1937 – 1944. He was commonly known then as ‘Algy’. He enlisted in the Air Training Corp at the age of just 16 years in 1942 in a bid to join his brother ‘Jim’ in WWII. Roy was the youngest son of Harry Powell Bradley and Jessie Campbell Victoria (nee Cummins), and he had three brothers and three sisters. Roy had many relatives and cousins (some of whom were also called Jessie, Harry or Roy).
Study and Work
After serving in the RAAF for a short time towards the end of 1944 and in 1945, he studied at the University of Melbourne and Trinity College and was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1952, working at first in Horsham. He married Margaret Godbehear in 1953. He then transferred to Mont Park Psychiatric Hospital and in 1967 began training chaplains in CPE so they could work in hospitals. Margaret and Roy had four children.
Rev. Roy Bradley and his family moved to Perth (1975-1982), and he then returned to Avalon (1982 -1987) serving as an Anglican Minister in the Lara community west of Melbourne.
He found himself retiring in 1992 after a life in community pastoralism and healthcare.
He was awarded an OAM in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2009, for service to the community through the development of healthcare chaplaincy and pastoral education centres.
Clinical Pastoral Education
The Austin Hospital CPE Program continued for 30 years from 1967, supported by Rev Drew Lelean and admired by Dr Cunningham Dax ( See, Dr Eric Cunningham Dax | Mont Park to Springthorpe )
One anecdote which illustrates Rev. Roy Bradley’s insight into mental health care was reported by Cheryl Holmes:
‘Roy was a member of the interdisciplinary team in the psych ward and involved in a case conference about this particular patient who had been in their care, and they were talking about a piece of artwork that this patient had done. It was very, very sombre and bleak. It was a tree, it looked like a dead tree, and they’d all been talking about how difficult it was and Roy Bradley was the one who had picked up on one extreme and very tiny point, there was a green shoot and that changed the whole understanding and picture of what might be happening. So that was a very important encouraging story. How things can change if people are aware of what might be happening in someone’s spirit.’ (Interview conducted by Cheryl G. Holmes in research for her PhD ‘Shaping the Future of Spiritual Care in Australian Public Hospitals: Learning from the Story of Spiritual Health Victoria’ (2023) (See, 4.-EC-Dax-contribution-to-SC-in-Vic-pdf.pdf)
Roy was warm-hearted, wise and a very special leader. His chaplaincy is remembered with fondness and respect.
Roy was still meeting with colleagues in the weeks preceding his death in 2017 at the age of 91 years.

In 2019 a book was published to recognise Roy’s life and work in pastoral care. Also starting from 2019, Roy has been remembered via the annual Roy Bradley Oration on contemporary community care issues.
Complied by Kathy Andrewartha (2025)

Resources:
‘A brief history of Mental Health Spiritual Care in Victoria. The contribution of Dr E. Cunningham Dax’ (1908-2008), – 4.-EC-Dax-contribution-to-SC-in-Vic-pdf.pdf
Gillian Henderson – ‘To Honour Roy Bradley’, – roy.pdf
Roy Bradley Tributes from CPE, – Roy Bradley – Tributes – ANZACPE
Vale Roy Algernon Bradley OAM, – Roy Bradley Appreciatian

Dr John Springthorpe and St John Ambulance Victoria

Biographies of John Springthorpe are available on the Mont Park to Springthorpe website – there is a long detailed article Dr John Springthorpe | Mont Park to Springthorpe and a shorter one Dr John Springthorpe at Mont Park Hospital | Mont Park to Springthorpe
This additional article is the result of Dr J. Allan Mawdsley’s research which discovered Dr John Springthorpe’s connection with the formation of St John Ambulance Victoria. Allan’s book ‘A Formidable Man – the life of John William Springthorpe’ (2024), and some of his other writings (Mawdsley, 2016, 2019) are the sources of most of this information.
The cover photograph of ‘A Formidable Man’ shows John Springthorpe in the regalia of Knight of Grace in the Order of St John. Springthorpe (born 1855) served on the St John Council of Victoria from 1886 for 45 years. This branch was formed in 1883 with Dr James Edward Neild being one of the influential people in getting support for its establishment and development. Springthorpe’s colleague Dr Dan Gresswell (see Dan Astley Gresswell (1853 – 1904). | Mont Park to Springthorpe) had also become an enthusiastic member of the powerful group of St John Ambulance Victoria.
From 1907-1909 Dr Springthorpe was the Chairman of St John Council, and then President until 1916.
He had been employed as Medical Officer at the Beechworth Asylum in 1880, and after service in World War I, then aged in his 60s, he worked in several other Victorian Asylums. He is particularly remembered for his advocacy and humane psychiatric care for military veterans assigned to these hospitals.
Springthorpe and Gresswell were both advocates of educating the community on public health matters. Since 1883, St John had been offering their First Aid classes.
Important links were established in Victoria from 1883 with the Victorian Railway Authority. The risks to the thousands of workers involved in this new heavy industry, expedited the introduction of St John Ambulance First Aid teams in the railway workshops. Several major train accidents resulted in injuries and deaths and reinforced the need for emergency first aiders throughout the community.
A visit to Melbourne by U.S. President ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt’s ‘Great White Fleet’ of sixteen battleships in 1908, resulted in 3000 American sailors marching in a parade through city streets. With 500,000 people observing the welcome, sixteen public First Aid posts were set up and 500 casualties were treated by First Aid volunteers who had all been trained by St John. This enhanced the status and showed the value of St John Ambulance Victoria. From this time the new Victorian Civil Ambulance Service began to charge fees to help recover their costs.
By 1910 St John had purchased its first ambulance to add to its three horse-drawn vehicles located in the city, at Ascot Vale and Prahran. It also had purchased ‘Ashford litters’ – stretchers on wheels – and these were housed at police stations. Philanthropic donations kept the organisation in funds.

Springthorpe expended his enormous energy in promoting all manner of health services including nursing, dentistry, physiotherapy and St John Ambulance. In his 1914 textbook ‘Therapeutics, Dietetics and Hygiene’ he recommended St John Ambulance courses to ensure practical response to ‘haemorrhages, fractures, insensibility, burns and injuries generally’.
Many of us do First Aid training routinely to enhance employment expertise and protect our families and the community – a valuable legacy of St John pioneer Dr Springthorpe.
Allan Mawdsley is currently the volunteer curator of the St John Ambulance Museum in Williamstown, which you might like to visit St John Museum – St John Ambulance Australia (VIC) INC – Saving Lives Through First Aid

References:

Allan Mawdsley (2016) ‘Springy’. Dr John Springthorpe, versatile St John pioneer in Victoria

2. Allan Mawdsley (2019) St John and the Victorian railways
3. Allan Mawdsley (2024) A Formidable Man – the life of John William Springthorpe
Thanks to Allan Mawdsley for his help with this article

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