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In 1980 you had to supply your own tool kit and mechanical repairs like brake adjustment, wheel stud replacement, engine shut down over ride, dirty fuel, leaking fuel, broken fan belts, air-conditioning failure, blown tyres (retreads) and suspension air bags were common. The early GM's guzzled oil (and diesel) and you never left home without a good supply. Things like greasing the prop shaft uni joints had to be done in Perth and Brisbane and this was a bugger of a job as it was very difficult to get underneath the coach without a lot of ingenuity. The coaches as a whole were very reliable, the motors and gear boxes wold go for a million KM before being pulled completely out and reconditioned. We had some unbelievably talented people working with us and quite a few of them were sent overseas to factories (like Bosch in Germany) and they would come back with container loads of every conceivable part. Tyres arrived by the container directly from the factory in Japan.
Wild life was an issue as nearly every trip into W.A. I would clean up at least one or two kangaroos. It was an issue for the vehicles because there was no room for a kangaroo to go under the body of the coach and they usually got "spat out" from the front wheel well causing panel damage. I remember coach number 7 arrived brand new from Brisbane and travelled as a second coach on my Thursday service to Perth. It was the first of the 6V92TTA's and I had it on the return trip, unfortunately out on the Nullabor at around 2.00am I cleaned up a pack of Kangaroos and the Bull Bar fell off and we had to load it into the luggage bin. Upon my return to Wangaratta Jim the owner went ballistic, this was the first of the aluninium Bull Bars and they did improve. On one trip to Perth at around 3.00am I had a big bird hit the Drivers windscreen and push the glass back in the centre enough for the bird to end up in the door well. I had passengers freaking out, I was having a heart attack and we were still travelling well above the speed limit. I did manage to stop and to regain my composure and continued to the nearest Roadhouse where I found a pallet and installed verticle windscreen supports and drove on to Perth looking through what reminded me of jail bars.
Timetables had to be adhered to and that presented some challenges. Most of the coaches would travel coonsistently at 115KPH, some would go faster say up to 125kph and a few (thankfully) were slower. Adelaide to Melbourne presented major challenges. we departed Adelaide at 9.15pm and swiftly climbed Mt Lofty with a fleeting view of the lights of Adelaide. Once on top you would often be faced with thick fog and a huge volume of interstate trucks and a narrow road with few safe passing sections, by the time you go to the Shell at Horsham the front passengers had red ears from the language on the CB, your eyes were red and hanging out and you felt "wired" and hopefully you were on time.
The coaches were well appointed with a "drivers bunk" at the rear (handy that!) and I had a policy that if you were not driving you had to be in the bunk (some drivers like to sit talking to the girls and when it came to their turn to drive they would be stuffed). I drove mainly with Hans and Dennis for the two years and we developed systems that worked for us, Hans and I for example would buy two war comics for each return trip and although you may not feel tired would jump into the bunk and read about two pages and fall asleep. The air-conditioning wasn't great in the early coaches and it got very hot most places we went and so ( just like in India where the Driver got the air-conditioned room) I would jump into the bunk and pull the whole air-conditioning panel out of the ceiling so instead of getting two little round holes of cold air I would get a foot square, - freezing I would be and the rest of the passengers were left wondering where all the pressure had gone on their vents. All but one of the coaches were Austral built in Brisbane and the one Denning was hard top sleep in as you had to stay "star shaped" trying not to be thrown out of the bunk.
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