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