DESPITE a few detours, including more than 35 years as the Swan Hill Specialist School bus driver, being an aid was something Shirley Hammond simply could not escape.
“I fell into the job as the specialist school’s aid, but I really loved it,” she says.
“People say when are you going to retire and I say what would I retire for?
“I just love it here.”
Originally a Koondrook girl, Ms Hammond attended high school in Kerang but left at the age of just 15 to begin working as a hospital aid in Barham.
Five years later, married and with children, Shirley briefly left behind her career as an aid and worked at a packing shed while raising her family.
But it was not long before she was pulled back into a life of assisting children, after a parent asked Shirley if she wouldn’t mind doing the bus run for the specialist school — in her own car.
“In those days they didn’t have a bus and I had to use my own car for a while,” Shirley says.
For more of this story see today’s Guardian (October 31, 2012).
