In 1936 Benalla’s Dulcie Read and her brother Dudley purchased their first bus.
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They would use it to transport students from Benalla to Wangaratta Technical School.
As time went on, the business grew and would go on to offer a variety of routes around the north east.
Running school buses remained a core element of their business for its entire life.
In 1939 Dulcie would meet, and fall in love with Fred Brack.
They would marry, and in 1945 the business was renamed Read and Brack Pty Ltd.
The business would operate until 2011 when the business, now called Benalla Bus and Coach Lines, was sold to its present owners.
Diplomacy was a requirement of bus drivers in Fred Brack’s day.
Fred recalls ringing a parent about a high school student using obscenities on the bus.
But when the student’s father answered the phone with a tremendous torrent of colourful language, Fred decided that pursuing the matter would be pointless.
Buses of the 1940s and later were very rugged affairs.
A four-ton light truck chassis with half the motor above the floor made for noisy, uncomfortable trips.
During the war years, gas from coal producers on the back of buses provided fuel.
Many of the buses were in fact mail vans carrying students as a sideline.
The students took second place to mail and often waited until 5pm before leaving Benalla High to go home.
These buses were wooden framed and were often used to provide “secret” night time transport of Airforce personnel from the Benalla base.
On one night time trip the back few feet of a wooden bus were taken off by a steam train on a crossing.
Several airmen fell out on the road, but after covering the back with a tarp, the trip continued.
Having largely blacked out six-volt headlights, didn’t help such journeys.
Perhaps Benalla’s most famous driver/owner of buses was Dulcie Brack.
She drove an old Reo Speed Wagon on the Tungamah-Benalla High route in the 1930s.
The vehicle featured a steering wheel in the middle of the dash with a student seated on either side of the driver.
The other students were ranged on benches along the largely open sides of the bus.
It was the longest school bus run in Victoria being a 150-kilometre round trip.
On one occasion, after tolerating wild behaviour from boys on this rugged bus, young Dulcie decided to take action.
She lined up the boys outside the bus and administered a “touch up” across their bottoms with a riding crop which she carried with this purpose in mind.
This calmed the students down immediately and the trip to Benalla High continued in silence.
There were no subsequent complaints from parents.
Another similar episode involved a Tungamah bus driver who had previously been a policeman and a publican.
He responded to a wild male student by inviting him politely to get off the bus. When he did so, apparently the student’s head somehow made some contact with the side of the bus.
The driver commented “now we understand each other”.
The student and his mates quietened down for the rest of the journey after this experience.
On another occasion, the Mansfield bus was struggling up the Lima South hill on its way to Benalla High, when the driver, on only his second day in the job, saw a student hanging out the top slider of a window.
With assistance from his “mates”, the student was ejected from the window and hit the road at about 50kph.
He quickly rose from the dirt and ran to catch the bus with no apparent side effects.
The driver resigned the following day.
One thing that school bus travel will always retain, no matter what era, is that it is an invaluable part of the students’ education and life experience.
For many students, it is among their fondest memories of their school years.
The bus drivers were often key figures in students’ lives and sometimes of far more significance and influence to them than their teachers.
Editor