ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A local coach company has done one of their longest serving and widely respected drivers dirty this week as the annual roster was released overnight.
John Coleman, of Betoota Heights, has been driving coaches in the Diamantina and Eromanga Basin for over 40 years and last night found out that he’d be driving the coaches for an exclusive local private school.
Cunce College is often seen as the gauche, new money, social climbing alternative to the more established private schools in Betoota. There is the elite all-boys K-12 boarding school, Whooton School and their sister school The Wyphmatereal School. Schools where generations of the same family have been since the place was built. Schools that don’t exist to many, if not most sections of society. And then there’s the Catholic schools, St Kickphortouch College and St Alcolizzata Girls Grammar. Selective high schools for kids with a brain worth saving and then the great catch all, the town’s public high schools.
The 67-year-old explained to The Advocate that getting rostered on to drive the coach for schools such as the ones above is one of life’s great indignities.
“They can be so rude and disrespectful,” he said.
“A lot of them look down on someone like a bus driver. Not all of them but a lot of them. Some of them think it’s OK to antagonise the bus driver, to yell at the bus driveer and to carry on like the bus is their own personal vehicle. The kids from the public high school, while also incredibly poorly behaved, don’t look at the bus driver with the same level of superiority and disdain,”
“These Cunce College kids are dreadful. I was hoping to get the winery tours this year, or even the daily service to Birdsville. It’s going to be a long year. It was good in the 80s because we could give them a quick clip under the ear if they got a bit too big for their Clarkes. Nothing scarier when you’re 16, 17 years old than getting a good open palm whack up the side of the head. Used to shut them up quick smart. Good cure for ADHD, too. When I was a boy, those kids got their head bashed against the chalkboard and flogged with a good length of varnished bamboo. Sink or swim type stuff. Happened to me a lot and I turned out fine,”
“Now, we just have to sit there and let them throw shoes at us. What a world.”
More to come.
