Standing by the roadside around 10:00 PM in March 2013, I was watching the blue-grey fog swirling in, while waiting for the Glen Hartwell to Willamby bus.   Feeling a tap on my left shoulder I started then turned to face my friend Malik El Huq.   Until recently a Refugee on Christmas Island, Malik had upon release moved to LePage in the Victorian countryside, and we had become fast friends.

Looking me straight in the face, Malik carefully pronounced the words, “I think the bus is coming, Arthur.”

Although I was not yet deaf in 2013, I had been warned by specialists that I would be, so I was already learning lip reading, realising it would be much harder to learn once my hearing had gone.   My fiends helped out by never speaking until I was facing them.

Turning to where Malik was pointing, I could just make out a small object swathed in a light blue aura by the fog.   For a moment it was conjectural as to what the object was.   Then slowly it approached until it was undoubtedly a bus.   A double-decker bus.

“The double-decker bus!” said Malik, in his excitement forgetting to look at me as he spoke.   Then realising, he turned toward me and repeated it.

“A double-decker bus!” I corrected, refusing to give in to local legends.   For twenty years, since the mid 1990s, there had been a legend of a ghostly double-decker bus, which mysteriously arrived sometimes on the Glen Hartwell to Willamby route.

“They say that no-one is ever seen again after boarding the double-decker bus!” said Malik, sounding as though he actually believed the legend.

“No,” I corrected, “only if they’re careless enough to climb the stairs to the upper deck.   People claim to have ridden in the lower deck without anything happening to them.”

“Really?” asked Malik, eyes wide, like a child on its first visit to a fairground.

“Yes, that’s how the legend is known.   If no-one was ever seen again, there would be no-one to spread the legend.”

“Then you believe the legend?” asked Malik.

“Of course not, it’s probably just a promotional bus.   They have double-decker buses in Alice Springs and the Gold Coast as tourist buses.   On rare occasions they send one down to Victoria to promote some interstate event.”   Although I had only ever seen promotional double-decker buses in Melbourne – more than three-hundred kilometres from where we were.   I had never seen a double-decker bus in the twelve years that I had been living in the Victorian countryside.