MIENA’S Julie Honner could nearly drive the 59 kilometres from Miena to Bothwell blindfolded.
The 62-year-old has been driving the privately-owned school bus up and down the Highland Lakes road for more than 35 years, safely delivering children from the Great Lakes area to Bothwell District School.
Unlike most bus drivers Julie has to contend with ice, snow and freezing temperatures right through winter, sometimes having to call all the parents to say that it’s just too dangerous and the bus run is cancelled.
Rising at 5.20am, she gets her chores done, checks the weather and starts the run from the Great Lake Lodge by 7.30am, picking up kinder to grade 12 kids along the way outside properties such as Hunterston, Dungrove, Cluny, Nant and Norwood.
When her precious passengers disembark, she simply parks opposite Weavers Crafts, where for nearly 15 years she has filled in her day volunteering in the shop and attending to the gardening until it’s time to load up the kids again after school for the return trip.
There’s usually about 17 children, the older ones helping the littlies get their seatbelts on until they manage it themselves, and all in all they’re well behaved, Julie said.
“These kids are often second generation that I’ve carried, I just remind them that I know their mum and dad and they treat me with respect,” she said.
Julie, who is a councillor with Central Highlands Council, has one day off every two months so she can attend council meetings and on these occasions her son Chris is the driver.
She’s on her fourth Mitsubishi bus, it was a Mazda before that, and it has a two-way radio to allow communication in the many areas without mobile phone service.
“When I first started there was no mobile phone, no police up here, so I’d call Inland Fisheries before I took off to see if the road was open in winter,” Julie said.
“The Miena community bought the two-way for me and it was great being able to keep in touch with the log truck drivers. “Back before the road was sealed and it was a lot narrower, especially through Barren Tier, they would keep tabs on where I was and move right over, even though the unwritten rule was if you were going down you gave way to vehicles coming up, especially in the snow.”
Julie knows how to change a tyre and has done it once or twice, but said on most occasions when she gets a flat someone jumps in and gets it sorted.
She ticks off her list twice a day, jokes with the kids, occasionally has to stop if they’re sick or need a toilet, pushes through the occasional herd of cattle or sheep on the road, and once she was first on the scene at a truck rollover and had to call parents to collect their children while she waited for emergency services.
Julie grew up at Derwent Bridge and met her husband Geoff while he was there working for the Department of Main Roads. They lived there until their two children were both going to school and then moved into Bothwell for a few years before finally returning to Geoff’s home town of Miena.
“We were both offered the job of driving the bus by the owners Irene and Geoff Glover, but it just ended up being me behind the wheel most of the time,” Julie said.
“It’s a great job and I’ve no intention of retiring any time soon.”