THE plight of a Mill Park pensioner forced to take taxis to hospital for his cancer treatment after his bus service was cancelled has sparked a move to restore the service.
Jeffrey Wood, 69, relied on the 563 bus to get to radiation treatment for lung cancer at the Peter MacCallum Hospital in East Melbourne.
But in April the service, which passed close to his home, was cancelled. It was one of 12 rerouted by the state government after it extended train services to southern South Morang.
Mr Wood, who died six weeks ago, and his wife, Margaret, were left with a 10 to 15-minute walk to the nearest buses – uphill walks that he couldn’t manage, his daughter Leanne Cacoyiannis said.
“They were housebound. They had to use taxis to get into Peter MacCallum or relied on me driving them and taking time off work,” she said.
Her parents moved to their Melrose Place house 12 years ago because a bus stop was around the corner in Mill Park Drive. Her father, a retired railway worker, had never driven.
The Woods were so upset by the extra stress that they asked Whittlesea councillor Mary Lalios to circulate a petition to restore the bus service.
“Dad always loved getting the bus and going for a cup of coffee up at Westfield, but in the last months of his life he couldn’t even get up to the bus stop to go for a coffee,” Ms Cacoyiannis said.
“He said, ‘I feel like I’m dead, I can’t even get out of my own house’. For Dad to end up like that was just disgusting. Even as he lay dying in hospital, he would ask: ‘Have you heard anything about the bus?”‘
Cr Lalios said: “What happened with Mr Wood highlights the personal struggles people have to go through because of bureaucratic decision-making without any consultation.”
A public meeting over lost bus services will be held at Mill Park Community Centre, Blamey Drive, at 2.30pm on Friday, August 17.
