This Canberra bus enthusiast has just saved you from a lot of Googling

For the first time, Canberrans looking to travel interstate without using a car now have a one-stop shop to see how it can be done.

Following an online competition, the Public Transport Association of Canberra (PTCBR) has released a regional public transport map for the city, detailing coach and train connections between Canberra and places as far flung as Albury in NSW (and Wodonga in Victoria), Mollymook on the South Coast, and Cowra in Central West NSW – to name just a few.

The PTCBR put the call-out last month to Canberrans after discovering how few locals actually know about these services.

“There are all these disparate services which people might look up from time to time, but there’s no sort of single source, and this is where maps are really good,” PTCBR secretary Matt Baillie told Region.

“People love the Murray’s bus, which goes to Sydney, but not as many people know it also goes to the South Coast and the Southern Highlands.

“Then there are the NSW TrainLink services. A lot of people know about the Sydney-to-Canberra train, but fewer people know about the connecting coach services that go in different directions along the way, or the V/Line train to Melbourne.

“And there are lots of Greyhound services as well.”

The competition asked for people with “an interest in both public transport and graphic design” to draft a map that shares “a good amount of information on what services are out there … expressed in a way that’s easy to read and understand”.

And now we have a winner, prepared by Molonglo Valley resident Kyle Hanley. And few others are so qualified.

Not only does Kyle run his own map-making business called Map Depot, but a few years ago, he bought his old Newcastle school bus – a 10-tonne Mercedes (which he often takes out on weekend joy rides or Christmas light tours) – and his house is chock-full with more than 2000 pieces of bus memorabilia.

Think hand-painted bus route pointer signs from Sydney, old destination boxes from bus windows, and about 15 of the old yellow and black timber ‘Signal Bus’ posts that used to stand by bus stops here in Canberra.

He even had a custom-made doona cover on his bed featuring Canberra’s bus routes, at least until he put the apparently machine-washable creation through the wash and “it just fell apart”.

“I still have the pillowcase though,” he says.

“In many ways, I’m more interested in the infrastructure than the vehicles themselves. A lot of these old signs show the hand of the sign writers, because a lot of them were hand-painted up until the 1980s, so you can see the brush strokes and all that kind of stuff.

“And I was very fortunate, growing up in Newcastle, to get to know the people who made the signs at the bus depot, and whenever they took old ones down, they’d put them aside for me … And that sort of spread to other bus operators across the country’s transport industry.”

Kyle moved to Canberra in 2010, and not having a car, got to know our public transport system very well.

“I like to get out and just have a look around at the different shopping centres, and gravitate towards the lake to walk the lake circuit quite frequently. I went over to Queanbeyan too a few times.”

He had started drawing maps just out of high school, when he won a casual contract with the local state-run bus company in Newcastle.

“When I saw the Canberra competition come up, I thought it’d be nice to do something for myself, as a local,” he says.

He started with the coaches he knew about, followed by a “bit of Googling and looking at trip-planning websites”.

“I checked out a few of the travel planning apps on my phone, and just poked around as much as I could, and then when I was fairly confident I had everything, that’s when I started to sketch it out.”

PTCBR has since shared the map on its website and social media pages, and while it might have been a pro-bono effort, Kyle says, “if anyone gets use out of it, or is at least inspired to maybe catch a coach or train the next they travel interstate, that makes me quite happy”.

“I think that’s the main way these connections can be improved – more consistent advertising of what’s available. Because when I say I had to research everything, I had to go through about 20 different websites to find out everything.”

Visit PTCBR to download your own high-res copy of the map.