Campaign to get on the bus this summer

PUBLIC transport advocates are urging people in Lorne, Deans Marsh and Colac to use their seasonal bus service as much as possible this summer with the aim of having it run for longer.

Hutchinson Bus Lines operates the service, which typically begins on the third Friday in December (which would be December 17 this year) and ends on the last Sunday in January (which would be January 30 in 2022).

The bus runs five times a day, seven days a week, starting at about 8am in Colac and with the last trip from Lorne at about 8pm, stopping in Deans Marsh and Birregurra along the way.

Deans Marsh resident Juliet Beatty said residents and businesses in her town, as well as Lorne and Colac, wanted Public Transport Victoria (PTV) to extend the summer seasonal bus service to cover at least the entirety of the summer holiday period, if not longer.

“(The last Sunday) has even fallen on the Australia Day public holiday, but not run on the Monday!”

She said people had been reading recent media coverage about the shortage of housing for staff in Lorne, and public transport could be a way to get workers to and from Lorne.

The original bus service was established following a community campaign and petition led by a Grade 6 pupil at the Deans Marsh Primary School, which led to a submission being forwarded and accepted into the the G21 Geelong Regional Plan in 2013.

Ms Beatty said a lobbying group formed about five years ago to push for the service to be extended but was unsuccessful.

“After speaking to several other interested parties, we felt that the time might be right to once again push for an extension of at least one week either end.”

She said PTV and Hutchinson Bus Lines did not widely advertise the seasonal bus service each summer, so the plan in Deans Marsh at least was to remind the community through signs in The Store, in the Cottage mail-out and possibly The Croaker newsletter.