Te Kūiti woman Jan Crosland has recently retired after more than 50 years of driving buses. Photo: Dan Tasker
After more than five decades behind the wheel, Jan Crosland has finally decided to park up for good.
From driving school buses and coaches to ambulances, rural mail runs and even vehicles used in The Hobbit in a professional driving career spanning more than 50 years, the Te Kūiti woman retired from her Black Water Rafting job earlier this year.
She has been reflecting on a lifetime that began on a farm in Waimiha and grew into a career that took her across the King Country and beyond.
“I guess it may have sparked my love of driving,” Crosland said, recalling learning to drive tractors and trucks while helping her father feed stock and stack the bailed hay.
“My Dad made me get my driver’s licence when I was 16,” she said.
Her journey into professional driving began in the early 1970s while living at Maraetai near Mangakino, where her then-husband worked on the hydro scheme.
After joining St John as a volunteer, she gained heavy traffic, bus and ambulance licences – and even a motorcycle licence “just because I could”.
Soon she was driving a school bus during the week and volunteering as an ambulance transport officer in her spare time.
One of her earliest ambulance journeys is still one of the most memorable.
Crosland was called to drive a seriously injured construction worker to Waikato Hospital after he had been impaled by a reinforcing steel rod, while working on the Maraetai hydro project.
“There were no rescue helicopters in those days, I just drove carefully and kept my eyes on the road ahead,” Crosland said.
The worker who made a full recovery.
After moving to Te Kūiti, Crosland continued volunteering with St John, eventually completing advanced ambulance training in Auckland before serving for 20 years as an ambulance officer and another five years on the area committee.
During that time, she attended countless accidents, medical emergencies, sporting events, patient transfers – and helped deliver two babies in the back of an ambulance.
“My kids got used to waking up in the morning and finding a stranger asleep on the couch,” Crosland said.
“What do you do with someone who’s crashed their car out on a country road in the middle of the night? You take them home,” she said.
Alongside her ambulance work, Crosland spent decades driving buses throughout King Country.
When family circumstances required a full-time income, she stepped away from bus driving to manage the Waitomo News office, succeeding long-time administrator Dulcie Hood.
But buses were never far away.
She continued weekend charters, rugby trips and later returned to school bus driving while also working in real estate and going back to the Waitomo News.
After retiring from the newspaper at 66 and missing life on the road, she climbed back into the driver’s seat once again on a regular school bus run, then spending her final driving years at Black Water Rafting before retiring a few months ago.
Crosland admitted walking away from bus driving wasn’t easy, especially because of the kids.
“When I gave up school bus driving, I really missed the kids,” Crosland said. “Some of the children on my bus were the sons and daughters of parents I’d driven to school 15 or 25 years earlier,” she said.
Crosland also became a qualified driving instructor after helping a neighbour learn to drive an adapted automatic vehicle following the death of her husband.
She spent five years teaching local people to drive and still has former students stop her to say they remember her lessons.
Her driving experiences extended beyond buses and ambulances, including rural delivery mail runs and she even helped relocate buses and support vehicles used during the filming of The Hobbit.
“The second time around they gave me the tuck-shop bus, so I wasn’t worried if I got lost – I wouldn’t go hungry,” Crosland said.
Te Kūiti woman Jan Crosland has recently retired after more than 50 years of driving buses. Photo: Dan Tasker
