The sign by the entrance desk to Sydney Bus Museum declares possibly the strongest long-distance relationship in bus heritage.
Designed by graphic artist Kyle Hanley, featuring GVVT logos, it marks the transglobal twinning of our two groups. Signs declaring the new bonding also adorn the entrances to Bridgeton Bus Garage.
Transport binds us, in some cases our roots, too. As a youngster in the 1960s before emigrating, SBM director Duncan MacAuslan sold tickets from his grandparents’ newspaper shop which served as an agency for Central SMT at Eddlewood, Hamilton.
He said: “I sold many miner’s weeklies. They arrived from the pit still black with coal dust and eyes white, like pandas in reverse. Two and a match was a common request – two cigarettes and a single match to chain smoke on the way home.”
Footnote: the red bus pictured in the background is SBM’s oldest double-decker, an Albion Venturer type 80, with Waddington (Sydney) wooden-framed body, which entered service in 1935. It is a static display as it is not insurable for road use.