A map showing the main Sydney bus terminals and the routes which ran through them from December 1961. The route designations are an uncomfortable mix of streets the buses run along downtown (Pitt and Castlereagh Street Services) and eventual destinations (Northern Suburbs Services via the Harbour Bridge), which doesn’t really help to make the system user-friendly. The extensive legend below the map helps somewhat, but it’s all somewhat arcane. In practice, you remembered where the buses you always caught left from and went there – but woe betide if you ever had to catch an unfamiliar bus from a different terminal!

The actual signs at bus stops – see the second image – weren’t much help either, filled with many tiny little route numbers and descriptions. I hazily remember signs like these at the Eddy Avenue stop near Central Station in the late 1980s or early 1990s, so they were a mainstay of bus wayfinding in Sydney for decades.

The map itself is at least clearly drawn and overcomes some of the drawbacks of the overly-complex downtown routing because of that. The illustrations of buildings are quite charming, and the little “umbrella and bag” icon for the lost property department locations is really quite superb.

The reverse of this map shows an overview of the whole Sydney bus network, which I’ve now posted here.

Source: National Library of Australia

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