Countrylink Bus Terminus

Started by smitho, June 14, 2010, 06:04:33 PM

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smitho

Noticed last week that the West Row bus stop used by Countrylink as its Civic terminus now has a shelter...installed as part of the refurbishment of the adjoining pocket park.

Sir Pompously

#1
Two Adfree shelters to be exact.

smitho

The return of long distance coaches to West Row is a bit of history repeating itself.

In years gone by, the other side of West Row used to be a hive of activity for non-ACTION buses as it was the terminus for most if not all long distance buses into Canberra. There was no Canberra Rex bus terminus or Jolimont Centre in those days.

The ACT Tourist Bureau used to occupy the site on the corner of West Row and London Circuit, so the road outside saw quite frequent arrivals and departures for long distance operators such as Yass-Canberra Coaches (now Trans Border), Greyhound, Ansett-Pioneer and I suspect many other fallen flags such as Murray Valley Coachlines. The Tourist Bureau was a booking agent for some coachlines.

Bus tour operations around the ACT used to be more common around Canberra and these too operated out of West Row. I can't recall if ACTION's charter coaches ever ran from there.

North of the Tourist Bureau along West Row was the Civic offices of Ansett Airlines and Trans Australia Airlines (now within Qantas) and both airlines used to operate frequent buses to the Canberra Airport, or 'the Drome' as oldtimers used to call it (short for aerodrome).As I recall, they used to run at least half hourly and were painted up in the respective airline livery colours. The Ansett buses looked smart in the orange, black and white livery of those times.