A website report suggesting that the Kinglake bus service may close, has been slammed by the Dyson Group as being false.
The bus company this week denied a report on the Kinglake Ranges News website that its daily bus service was “at risk”.
“Dysons has no intentions to stop operating or suggest not operating Route 384 Kinglake services,” said Paul Giusti, Group Manager Service Delivery of the Dyson Group of Companies.
“We can also confirm the Government, Transport for Victoria or PTV at no time have ever discussed or even floated the idea to discontinue the service,” Mr Giusti said.
“In fact Dyson’s can confirm as recently as a few months ago work is still continuing on what improvements with connectivity with Whittlesea services can be incorporated when opportunities become available.

“The article that appeared on the website www.kinglakerangesnews.com is not accurate in respect to Dyson’s, Transport for Victoria or PTV’s position, we are not planning to stop services to Kinglake.”

“Dyson’s has always prided itself on supporting the Kinglake district.
“Dysons operated a single am and pm weekday service for many years and now Kinglake has over 3500 residents and has a route service 384 which operates 10 trips am and pm trips.
“In addition we also operate six trips on Saturdays and four trips on Sunday giving the community multiple choices to travel seven days a week.
“This service has evolved through the support of Dyson’s, Transport for Victoria and PTV.
“The timetable and route description can be found on the PTV website: www.ptv.vic.gov.au/route/view/11109/
Mr Giusti said: “The article that appeared on the website www.kinglakerangesnews.com is not accurate in respect to Dyson’s, Transport for Victoria or PTV’s position, we are not planning to stop services to Kinglake.

“Based on the article is appears drivers are doing their best to ensure fare payment and compliance on our vehicles i.e. swipe their valid MYKI cards and recommending to our customers that swiping their MYKI’s ensures that the State is aware the service is important to the community and can potentially be the building blocks to put a case forward to continue to grow the service into the future,” Mr Giusti said.
“Fare evasion on the Public Transport system in Victoria needs to be stamped out, our drivers are reminding our customers that services are paid for by people who pay to travel, it’s this revenue that keeps the whole of the Public Transport system running not just Kinglake services,” Mr Giusti said.

The false report was published on the Kinglake Ranges News website published by Ashley Geelan.
Geelan, 39, in his first year of journalism studies at La Trobe University, says he is getting 500 unique visitors to his Kinglake Ranges News website each day.
Local authorities consider this as quite a claim as the official population of Kinglake including babies and school-age children is 1536, according to official 2016 Census figures.
Almost every adult Kinglake person would have to click on Geelan’s website each and every day to achieve this figure locally.
A computer industry source said most visits to Geelan’s website are likely to be from US, Ukraine and Chinese computer robots.
Earlier this year, Geelan sought to profit from press reports of the Kinglake Football-Netball Club.
He demanded a fee from publishers of The Local Paper, and The Yea Chronicle, for his reports. Both newspapers declined to pay, and have sourced match reports from elsewhere.
No local sports clubs in the region, over the past 100 years, have ever sought payment, but clubs instead value the free space that provides press publicity for the clubs and their events.

Geelan has had a colourful life. He acknowledges coming under investigation by the Australian Communications and Media Authority when “I built my own radio station in the late 1990s and (illegally) upped the transmitter power to 50 watts”. Five watts was the allowable power.
Last year Geelan wrote that he wished to conduct “a coup d’etat on the Mountain Monthly to make it a Kinglake mag once again”.
In 2004, at age 24, he published a guide to radio frequencies under the name of ‘Vicnews Pty Ltd: An Ashley Geelan company’.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has no record of such a company ever being registered.
Around that time, Geelan faced criticism from fellow amateur radio operators.
He replied to them at a discussion site: “So if you’d like to keep your belongings in one piece, and not find them at Cash Converters, I suggest you shut the f**k up. You have been warned.
“He won’t have my measure when I fix his little red wagon.
“I said I was a dope smoker – not a junkie – big difference,” Geelan said.