Ten years ago, the first Melbourne Music Bus Tour traversed Melbourne’s inner city. In the years that have followed, the bus itself has been central to its stunning success
When Victorian and international music personality Mary Mihelakos travels around the
world, it’s all about music.
After experiencing numerous tourist attractions that revolved around celebrating popular culture and icons from the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton and The Sopranos, she came up with her own idea to bring music tourism to Melbourne.
A critical requirement to get the idea off the ground was a bus.
“I often have big ideas that don’t necessarily need a huge amount of money to get started,” Mihelakos told ABC.
“After experiencing all of these global music orientated bus and walking tours, I’ve always thought at the back of my mind that it would be great if Melbourne had one too.”
This idea fuelled Mihelakos to introduce a new music tour to the city of Melbourne. Her first
step was to engage with councils and operators to find a bus that could be hired to go on these cultural journeys.
The City of Yarra proved pivotal, providing Mihelakos with a bus to use as well as
generously offering music-loving and knowledgeable driver Christine Kupke to help guide the inaugural trips.
Mihelakos says Kupke was a vital part of the tour, having grown up in Collingwood and knowing many musicians before retiring as the bus tour’s driver recently.
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In 2013, the first Melbourne Music Bus Tour hit the road as part of the City of Yarra’s Leaps
and Bounds music festival that Mihelakos was helping program. The bus tour continued
annually at the festival until 2016, when the opening of the Australian Music Vault at the Arts Centre Melbourne in 2018 allowed Mihelakos to continue the bus tour as an extension of the Vault.
The formula is simple. The Melbourne Music Bus Tour picks up passengers in front of the Arts Centre on St Kilda Road before travelling around Melbourne with a special guest onboard.
The bus starts by going down to St Kilda and South Melbourne, winding past the
likes of Mushroom Records and the Espy before heading back up through Prahran, South
Yarra and Carlton where it passes memorable venues from yester-year.
The tour then winds its way through the cultural centres of Fitzroy, Collingwood, Abbotsford
and Richmond, taking in all of Melbourne’s mighty music memories.
“There’s a lot of music-based tourism globally and I wanted to bring it back to a music city
like Melbourne in a unique way,” Mihelakos says.
“There are so many great landmarks like Festival Hall and the likes. The best way to see it all is on a bus, as it’s fluid and can change routes at any time to avoid traffic and visit these different streets and places in fun ways.”
After the bus first debuted in 2013, Mihelakos continued hiring 25-seat buses. But in the
2022/2023 season of the tour, Victorian operator Australiner came to the party with a 30 seater bus, while Mihelakos found a new driver to replace the retiring Kupke.
Mihelakos says the new driver, James Fleming, a member of the Vasco Era as well as supergroup ARC (featuring members of Powderfinger, Jet, You Am I and Spiderbait), is a perfect fit for the role.
“I put a call out on Facebook for a new driver and James responded, I had no idea he was also a bus driver, working for charter bus company Australiner, so it worked out perfectly,” Mihelakos says.
“He’s been a musician and an incredible keyboardist for most of his life, it’s a good coincidence that his day job is bus driving.”
It’s ideas like the Melbourne Music Bus Tour that saw Mihelakos inducted into the Music Victoria Hall of Fame in 2020. She recently grew the tour, running a bus in Geelong to see
historical music sites in the city, and has no intentions of slowing down.
“The beautiful part of this bus tour is you can take it anywhere – I’m currently writing bus
tours in my head for Sydney and Brisbane like I did with Geelong,” Mihelakos says.
“We’ve been able to sell out every bus tour we’ve done to date and having buses to run these tours has been a pivotal part of it.
“I’m looking at doing more regional bus routes in the future after our latest season was so successful.
“I’ve learnt lots about buses and the skill required by drivers to operate in the narrow streets we go down, it’s incredible and it makes the tour such a fun day for all involved.”