Kevin misses the beach in his old hometown, but a simple fix could help him

In short:

Port MacDonnell residents want a daily bus service to their town but a review into SA’s public transport system has been delayed.

The local council is advocating for the town of Yahl to expand despite a report highlighting the “absence” of public transport.

What’s next?

The review is now due to start by the end of the year.

Like many small-town residents, Kevin Trigg felt he had no choice as he grew older but to pack up and relocate to the nearest regional centre for better access to services.

The 77-year-old and his wife, Dian, had called Port MacDonnell, a town of about 800 people in South Australia’s south-east, home for two decades.

But then Dian died. 

With his vision impaired, meaning he could no longer drive himself around, he made the difficult decision to move 27 kilometres north to Mount Gambier.

“She said it was better for me up there and not down here,” Mr Trigg said of his late wife. 

But four years later, his connections with his former hometown are fraying, and he misses the sea.

Outside some volunteer-run services, it is impossible to travel to Mount Gambier and back on the same day from other towns in the south-east.

There is no bus at all to Port MacDonnell, South Australia’s southernmost town, and one of the largest not connected with the public transport system.

Mr Trigg relies on a friend to drive him to the Port MacDonnell Senior Citizens Club each Tuesday to play canasta, but, apart from that, he does not get to travel to the town very often.

“If a bus came down and went back in the evening or something like that, you could come down and spend a day down here quite well, because I love the sea,” Mr Trigg said.

“Twenty years down here, I miss walking around the beach and that.”

Review into system delayed

A review of the state’s regional public transport system that was meant to start this month has been put off until the end of the year.

Port MacDonnell Senior Citizens Club president Joy Braithwaite is worried the club will fold if more of its members who come from Mount Gambier lose their driver’s licences as they age.

“A bus service would be very, very handy, and a lot of people would use a bus,” Ms Braithwaite said.

“I’ve spoken to some of the residents here, and they’ve all said, ‘Yeah, it would be so handy to have a bus.'” 

“Because when you get older and you’ve got to travel to the Mount to do your main shopping, they would prefer to go on a bus than to drive in the inclement weather,” she said.

Port MacDonnell sits within the District Council of Grant, which surrounds Mount Gambier.

The council recently decided to advocate for the expansion of the town of Yahl — about 10 kilometres south-east of Mount Gambier — despite the City of Mount Gambier’s concerns that the sprawl would entrench the future residents’ reliance on cars.

A report said there was a virtual “absence” of public transport in the lower South East.

Grant Mayor Kylie Boston said she did not expect that to change soon.

“We don’t have public transport to any of other communities and, to be fair, there’s probably not a decent public transport within the City of Mount Gambier anyway, so for all of our townships. We do need to have that reliance on cars,” she said.

Disappointment but hope

The City of Mount Gambier council had been hoping to use the review to convince the Department for Infrastructure and Transport and Transport Minister Tom Koutsantonis that bus services within South Australia’s second-largest city should be improved.

Mount Gambier Mayor Lynette Martin said the delay was “very disappointing”.

“Hopefully it does go ahead,” she said.

Along with ways to improve the local service, there has been discussion at council meetings about better connecting Mount Gambier with smaller towns like Port MacDonnell, Millicent and Tarpeena.

“It certainly is a difficult situation for the whole of the Limestone Coast, and we realise that accessibility is very limited, and we did speak with the minister about this,” Ms Martin said.

“But he was very keen to get Mount Gambier sorted first before we launched into servicing the region, but I certainly would like to see the region serviced better than what it is now.”

Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional South Australia Ben Hood said the delay “really just shows that there is no political will from the Malinauskas government to tackle the real and serious issue of regional public transport”.

Mr Koutsantonis admitted the current regional public transport system was “not good enough” but blamed the Liberals for a lack of investment when they were in power from 2018–2022.

“What we’ve had to do now as a Labor government is go in there and review all these services, look at what’s needed and come back with a solution that we can afford,” he said.

A department spokesman said the new date for the review was “due to some delays in the procurement process”.