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.

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 14^th 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.

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‘off peak’ services were reduced to half hourly, evenings to 40 minutes and Sunday service from Camberwell station was withdrawn.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.

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