Ventura was founded in December 1924 by Henry Cornwall. The name and company colours (dark blue, light blue and yellow) derived from Ventura County, California where Cornwall had spent time after serving in World War I. A former employee of Track & Kintrack, St Kilda, Harry decided to form his own bus company when his employer refused to run a bus service along dirt roads through what was then Melbourne's outer east.[2][3][4]
Cornwall began operating a bus route between Box Hill and Melbourne central business district, and in 1930 began running buses between Box Hill and Mentone. The first depot was behind the petrol station on the corner of Station Street and Canterbury Road, in Box Hill South.
High Street Road Bus Service from Reg Carter with the Glen Waverley to Glen Iris service in April 1968
In 1957, a new depot was opened on the corner of Centre and Warrigal Roads, Oakleigh. This was followed in the mid 1960s by a depot on Mahoneys Road, Burwood East to replace the original Box Hill depot. In 1969 the Mitcham routes of C Young were purchased followed in September 1970 by Boronia Bus Lines from Don Nugent with 12 routes.[3][6]
In April 1987, Ventura acquired Bentleigh Bus Lines with three routes, and in December 1987 Hawthorn Bus Services, Rennies Bus Services, and Willis Bus Services all from Vic Haoust.[5][7] As a result of these purchases, it built a new depot at Knoxfield to replace Burwood East.
Further growth
In 2000, Ventura introduced the first Australian buses to run on ethanol fuel.[8] In February 2000, Ventura purchased Mount Dandenong Passenger Service from the Frazer family.[9]
In August 2013, as the result of the re-tendering of a number of Melbourne bus routes, the operation of SmartBus route 901 to 903, the National Bus Company operations (the Doncaster and Fitzroy North depots, including Smartbus routes 905 to 908), were transferred to Transdev Melbourne, along with 346 buses.[18]
In February 2024, it was announced that Singapore-based Keppel Infrastructure Trust would acquire 97.68% of the business. As part of the purchase, Managing Director Andrew Cornwall will remain as its CEO, while retaining the remaining stake of the business.[19] The acquisition was completed in June 2024.[20]
In 1973, Ventura took delivery of the first of many Denning coaches. It would build up a sizeable fleet before scaling back its charter operations in the early 1990s.[3]
The purchases of Bentleigh Bus Lines/Hawthorn Bus Service saw the fleet expand further. Many non-Leyland buses joined the fleet including Bedfords, Elwoods, Mercedes-Benzs and Volvo B10Ms.
When Ventura sought new buses in 1992 Leyland had ceased production, so two Scania L113s and a Volvo B10M with Volgren bodies were purchased for evaluation.[21] Ventura settled on Scanias after the evaluation period and it has since been the main chassis used in the Ventura fleet with 388 in the fleet as of May 2022. It also purchased 107 Designline bodied MANs. Since 2013 the fleet has switched to Volgren bodied Volvo B7RLE and Scania K310UBs. As at June 2024, the fleet comprised 927 vehicles.[1]
In 2017, the company began to integrate technology to track buses in real time across its route services.
The old Ventura fleet livery was light and dark blue with yellow signwriting. This was replaced in 2012 by a white with dark blue and yellow flashes livery, based on the Grenda livery. New deliveries are receiving the Public Transport Victoria white and orange livery with existing buses progressively repainted.
Buses which did not receive the Public Transport Victoria livery retained the previous Grenda livery, the former two-tone blue livery, the former blue, red and white livery of US Bus Lines or the Ivanhoe Bus Company green and yellow livery.
Eight buses are painted in SmartBus livery for use on the Route 900 service, four are in V/Line livery and a plain white livery with Ventura signage has been adopted for school/charter vehicles.[1]