My mum loves going to town on the bus each Thursday, travelling in from her retirement home to get her Tattslotto, visit the bank and the library.
She’s 81 years old, still steady on her feet and in her mind, and says she was never scared in the mall or at the bus stops. She was fearless.
Until last week. She was getting off the 2.30pm bus in Mitchell Street, not her usual time for travelling, but something came up that she had to come in for.
As she put her foot on the bottom step of the bus, a group of five or six young people rushed passed and she thought, “I’ll just let them go,” and gripped the pole hard to stop any inadvertent bumps.
But she hadn’t allowed for the folk completely outside her realm. Some chap high on something was in the middle of a domestic dispute with his girlfriend, and they came running up the aisle of the bus bashing each other and scattering everyone in front of them.
Mum was thankfully still clutching that pole, but if she had let it go a minute earlier, she would have been in the path of these idiots.
The result could well have been broken bones and a complete loss of confidence in her safety and ability to be out shopping on her own. An unpardonable loss in a country city like Bendigo.
We don’t live in down town New York for a very good reason – we like to feel safe wherever we go here, day or night.
The bus is a very important and cheap form of transport for those unable to afford a car, or who just like the idea of public transport, but it is a privilege not a right.
We all end up paying for your privilege, and if the cost is injury or damage to our loved ones, the cost is too high.
With the furore over the location of the bus stops perhaps we could also think about a code of conduct that could be policed, or a security guard on at least one service a day for those more feint of heart than my mum.