Blue Mountains Explorer Bus closes indefinitely due to pandemic lockdowns

October 14, 2021

The government pandemic lockdown has taken another tourist business victim in the Blue Mountains – Blue Mountains Explorer Bus.

No-one hopping on or off for months – so the decals come off

Managing director of the company which owns and operates domestic tour and coach company Fantastic Aussie Tours, Jason Cronshaw, said his fleet is not sustainable without international visitors.

Yet international visitors have been banned by the Australian Government since March 2020, and the New South Wales state Government has banned all visitation to the Blue Mountains since before that when it declared a series of state-wide bushfire emergencies:

10th November 2019
19th December 2019
2nd January 2020

The NSW Berejiklian Liberal-National state government negligently failed to quell multiple bushfires from 26th October 2019, so allowing 80% of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area to be incinerated into January 2020.

‘Disaster resilience’ is a new buzz word by apologetic bureaucrats shifting blame on to climatology theory

Then the Australian federal government negligently failed its national quarantine obligations, letting in thousands of foreigners into Australia despite a global pandemic warning.

Carnival’s notorious Ruby Princess cruise liner docks mid-pandemic in the centre of Sydney on 19th March 2020, with 2700 passengers allowed to disembark. More than 900 tested positive for coronavirus and most took domestic flights then around Australia.

Cronshaw:

“Without international tourists it’s just not viable. “We’re running a 77-seater bus with one or two people. It costs us $3.50 per kilometre on a 26km circuit and tickets are $49 for an all-day pass. The maths just doesn’t add up.”

Government band-aid compensation grants for the governmental bushfire and pandemic lockdowns simply came too little too late. Meanwhile, politicians and public servants keep happily paying themselves irrespective, while watching local family businesses go broke.

The tour operation was forced to close its Blue Mountains Explorer Bus sightseeing run for 27 days during December, 2019 – January, 2020 because of the bushfires and reported a 60% drop in passengers between that December and February, 2020, it confirms.

During the weekend of 14th-15th March, 2020, numbers plummeted another 50% almost overnight because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Four days later (19th March 2020), Explorer Bus services were slashed from 15 a day to seven, with 2.5 drivers a day to one. Recently, the double-decker fleet has run only on weekends and holidays, and the average weekly driver roster of 350 hours had dropped to 78, the company explained.

Meanwhile parent company, Fantastic Aussie Tours suffered an 85% drop in charter work and forward cancellations from schools and corporates and other group travel until October.

Work had picked up recently, but came to an abrupt halt with the latest NSW Government lockdown order out of Macquarie Street.

Fantastic Aussie Tours has operated the Blue Mountains Explorer Bus fleet around Katoomba and Leura since 1986 and conducted sightseeing tours and charters around Australia for two generations since 1974.

A red double-decker hop-on/hop-off Explorer Bus has already been sold, with another five on the market, the company confirmed.