Maureen Papps has spent five decades in the Dovedale School bus driver’s seat, and next week, she’ll start up the engine to continue her 51st year in the job.
The 80-year-old Thorp resident is now transporting the grandchildren of some of her earliest passengers – a fact that rather delights her.
The bus runs have gotten shorter, and the quality of the vehicles has improved rather dramatically over the years – she’s fond of the automatic transmission that now comes standard in her 23-seater.
Over the decades, a few of her customers have been difficult, but she has a soft spot for the country kids of yesteryear and of today.
“Now we seem to have a real good mob,” she says contentedly.
Her tenure started with the Education Board, before Hebberds Bus Company took over the contract, and then Suburban Coachlines. The contract is now held by Tapawera-based Wadsworth Motors.
“God, we had all sorts,” she laughs, reminiscing about some of the vehicles.
With so many years of bus driving under her seatbelt, the road could not always run smooth.
There have been flat tyres along the way, the most memorable of which was changed rather imperfectly by a group of well-meaning volunteers who came to her rescue.
“I think somebody, I’m not sure, forgot to tighten the nuts,” Maureen says kindly. As she rounded the hall bank corner near the school, “I had the tyre running along the road in front of me”.
Luckily, her young passengers had already disembarked for the day.
And while Maureen decrees she has not had a prang in all her years of driving, her biggest scare was a near-miss up the Baton Valley when a truck and trailer jack-knifed in front of her, sending her into a bank to avoid a nasty collision.
“It’s a hell of a responsibility,” she says, but mostly, her run is predictable and without too much unwanted excitement.
She starts at 7.45am and heads up Sunday Creek and down to the Baton Bridge, and then back to the school where she delivers her first cluster of students.
Then she heads back up to Brandy Creek at the top end of Dovedale, around to Thorn Road, and returns to the school with the second round of children just before 9am.
She says her interactions with the school’s teachers are a real highlight.
She has been driving since her own children attended the primary school, after being approached by a teacher about getting her bus licence.
“It just really suited me to do it, so I said yes,” she says, laughing. “I’m still saying it.”
She reckons she will keep on saying just that as long as her health allows.
“I’m enjoying the children at the moment – the kids are really great.”
