In the 1950s I used to take the trolley bus up to Wickham Terrace to go to the doctor with my mum, Tina. During the 1960s, sometimes I would catch the trolley bus along Coronation Drive and on other occasions I would go down to the Botanic Gardens.
The trolley bus was a great form of transport around Brisbane, quiet (sometimes called the ‘whispering death’), clean and, boy, did you have to hold on, because they could accelerate so fast! I remember the trolleybuses converging on the Gabba Fiveways with the big clock in the centre of the intersection and sometimes we would see: trams, trains, motor cars and trolley buses – all converging at this one centre of town just near the famous Gabba cricket ground.
At the Gabba in the 1960s they would let you in for free after tea. I watched the West Indies play Australia in a cricket game when Gary Sobers (or was it Clive Lloyd) score a century in the last session of play. Sobers was a diminutive man with incredibly flexible wrists. Clive Lloyd was a tall gangly person who wore round spectacles in those days. On that day, no one left the Gabba ground after tea for fear they would get hit in the back of the head! When they hit a six it was with such power the ball would ricochet off the concrete.
The trolleybuses would use the same wires as the trams. Sometimes the two parallel poles that conducted the electricity from the wires down to the electric engine in the front of the bus would become detached. The driver would have to get out with this big pole and put them back onto the parallel wires above. It always looked very dangerous to me, especially in the wet when conduction of electricity was so much more dangerous.
Below are some pictures of that time. Thanks to the crew at Remembering the Brisbane Tramways
Ian Curr
7 Oct 2023
