Ivanhoe Bus Company - a brief history

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system improver
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Ivanhoe Bus Company - a brief history

Post by system improver »

Ivanhoe Bus Company was formed on 16th August 1956, when Claude Morarty and William Molan acquired the Heidelberg Motor Omnibus Company, its route services ( Routes 13A, Heidelberg to Northcote and 123A, West Heidelberg to Ivanhoe) and 11 vehicles from Gordon Brown. Claude Morarty and Bill Molan had previously acquired another route from Mr Brown on 14th May 1952 (Route 49A, Mont Park - Cotham Road) and at that time they traded as M&M Motors. At the time, Claude Morarty also owned a bus service on the other side of town (Route 43A, Sandringham to Cheltenham), which traded as Sandringham Bus Service. From 1953, the liveries of Routes 49A and 43A were made the same - yellow with cream roof and red band and mudguards to allow interchange across town of vehicles and then from 1956 all went into the yellow and cream roof and green band and mudguards which were the colours of Gordon Brown's buses. Sandringham BS was sold to Ray Allnutt (Sandringham Bus Company) in 1961.

The full history of Ivanhoe Bus Company was the subject of the Australian Bus Panorama 2005 Christmas Special. Alan Greenhill provided a detailed account of the company's predecessors and history until 2005. Limited numbers of this publication are available from the BCSV (PO Box 8, Oakleigh South, 3167) for $10 each, including postage (it also includes a history of Baxter's Holroyd BC from Sydney).

BCSV member Charles Craig worked for M&M Motors in 1955 before the formation of the Ivanhoe Bus Company. These two pictures were taken by him. The first shows what is probably the first new bus for M&M Motors, although not actually brand new, being a demonstrator for Commonwealth Motors (bus distributors at the time) to advertise the Vulcan chassis (this one with a Symons and Fowler body). It was shown at the 1951 Melbourne Motor Show, was probably built in 1950 and went to M&M at the end of 1952:
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In a rather different Bell Street to today, here is most of the M&M fleet on an early Sunday morning before services began. Along with the Vulcan, there is also an MBA bodied Seddon (like the one in my avatar) and four International K5s, some with Cheetham & Borwick bodies and others with Symons & Fowler bodies:
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Here are three John Masterton depot shots, taken in 1963, the second in 1967 and the third in 1970. It can be seen that the CAC/Comair Bedford became the backbone of the fleet during this period:
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There were a number of PMCSA bodied Bedford BLPs in the fleet, this was the last, number 16 reg AVR 022, new 6/80:
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Ivanhoe then moved to Elwoods, six new and three from Ventura. This one was new to Bentleigh BL in 1986, was acquired by Ventura along with the routes (27/4/87) and was then sold to Ivanhoe in October 1993:
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The Ivanhoe Bus Company fleet always impressed as a modern, well kept set of buses. The yellow buses of Ivanhoe and Heidelberg will soon be blue.
Last edited by system improver on Wed Dec 02, 2020 11:26 am, edited 3 times in total.
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red baron
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Re: Ivanhoe Bus Company - a brief history

Post by red baron »

Thank you very kindly of the history and photo's,system improver of another iconic operator in the Northern Suburbs 8) .
it's a load of hog wog wash
ozzie.freddo
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Joined: Thu Mar 02, 2017 11:16 am

Re: Ivanhoe Bus Company - a brief history

Post by ozzie.freddo »

I've recently met up with Kel Punton who drove for IBC in the mid 1950s.
He was excited to see this brief history and is still very sharp with lots of detailed memories of working for Bill Molan and Claude Moriarty when they bought it from Gordon Brown.
I'm particularly interested in the Mont Park to Cotham Rd Kew service and would like to add a bit about the service to our history page
https://www.montparktospringthorpe.com/

Your article had a photo with a KS5 on the front right hand side. How can I get a copy of this for inclusion in our history project as Kel says that this one was used on the Mont Park run?
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