Some were unconscious,others trapped with limbs disappearing under steel. A firefighter with two decades of experience,Stott remembers a small girl reaching out to grip his ankle.
She asked:“Am I going to die?”
Crouching down,Stott reached for her hand. “You are not going to die,” he replied. “We are going to get you out.”
For this special report,The Age spent seven months speaking to 11 of the school children,a dozen parents of those on the bus,and the tradies that helped with the rescue.
In the minutes after the school bus skidded across the intersection,Exford Primary School principal Lisa Campo would hear sirens from the staff room and whispers of a crash. “It’s our bus,” the school receptionist would yell out before Campo jumped into her car and drove to the scene. Hours later,panicked parents would arrive at the crash site.
Most of the children would be pulled from the bus’s skylights by a who happened to be heading home from work when they saw the crash. The eight trapped children would have to wait for Stott and his crew to lift the wreckage before being rushed to hospital.
The truck driver who allegedly collided with the bus,Jamie Gleeson,would stop,call triple zero and report himself to police.
The driver of the school bus,Graham Stanley,would refuse to get in an ambulance until all 45 of the children were safe. With a broken ankle and injured back,he would be the final person taken to hospital. Stanley has not driven a bus since and questions whether he ever will.
A family leaves the site of the crash,which occurred in May 2023.Wayne Taylor
It will take many years before the echoes of the screams from that day fade from the memories of those in the tiny town of Exford,nestled between Melton and Bacchus Marsh.
For this special report,The Age spent seven months speaking to 11 of the schoolchildren,a dozen parents of those on the bus,and the tradies who helped with the rescue,saving the lives of all on board. Other interviewees include first responders,hospital staff and the bus driver to help reconstruct the events after school on May 16,2023.
‘The kids were happy’:The moment before the first stop
A schoolgirl’s singing rose above the gossip and games inside the bus as it left the school that Tuesday. Sports day was a washout,and the kids onboard had energy to burn.
Ashton Westlow,12,glanced at the girl singing,,a popular grade 5 pupil with bright-pink streaked hair. Awheata,10,always travelled home from school with her two younger brothers,nine-year-old Te Wai and Te Awhiorangi,7. It was a half-hour trip for the siblings.
As Stanley drove the bus on its regular route through the western fringe of Melbourne,a group of grade 6 kids started a game of truth or dare.
A local of more than 20 years,Stanley knew these roads and had driven this route hundreds of times. He knew the name of every child on board and expected to have them all home safely just after 4pm.
“The kids were happy,” he reflected. With his hands clasped together on his kitchen table in Melton,surrounded by framed pictures of his two grown children and their children,he added:“I’d had a good day at work. It was a good day.”
Heading down Exford Road,Stanley signalled to turn right as he approached the intersection ahead of his first stop. In his mirrors,he caught a glimpse of a truck approaching from behind as they lost sight of the school.
Indicating,Stanley pushed down on the brake pedal,slowing the bus ahead of its first stop.
Truck driver Jamie Gleeson had clocked up about 10 hours behind the wheel by the time he passed Exford Primary. He later told police the sun flickered through the trees as the bus slowed ahead of him.
Crash investigators would later hear Gleeson,from nearby Balliang East,recall that his first indication of the bus’s reduced speed was its brake lights. It,the 49-year-old told police after his arrest. There was no time to stop. Gleeson called triple zero and reported himself to police.
‘Get off me’:Trapped on the bus with Charlotte Lloyd
Those driving behind the school bus on Exford Road would later recall that its lights flickered as it tipped onto two wheels,lifting half of those onboard high into the air.
Ashton doesn’t remember feeling airborne – he remembers the bus shaking as he lurched forward,his head smacking into the seat before him.
Panicked,he wanted to find his brother.
That day,Ashton had taken the back seat. Ashton’s twin,Cadin Westlow,12,was closer to the middle and hadn’t worn a seatbelt.
It would take Ashton almost an hour to realise his twin was still alive. Down the aisle and out of his sight,Cadin was on the floor,drifting in and out of consciousness.
It was hard to move his face,eyes and mouth,Cadin recalled.
The scene of the bus crash at Exford.Jason South
But he had the strongest memory of seeing a girl’s shoe flung across the aisle – that and Charlotte Lloyd,11.
Somehow,Charlotte and Cadin were trapped together – Charlotte with her arm poking out a broken window,and Cadin collapsed on top of her,his arm pinned.
“Cadin,get off me,” she yelled. But they couldn’t move.
They were not alone. Nearby,Awheata,whose Maori name means “morning love”,was also trapped under the bus,her left arm disappearing underneath it.
Cadin remembered waking for a moment and catching a glimpse of another school friend,Grace Dau,staring back at him with her eyes wide open and one hand over her mouth.
Before slipping out of consciousness,Cadin saw men approach the bus window.
‘You’re going to need more than one ambulance’:Distress calls and a convoy of heroes
Dean Eastway was part of a close-knit team of tradies who had left work at a nearby construction site,driving home in convoy on a country backroad.
A horrified Eastway and his colleague Daniel Green watched helplessly from their work van as the bus crashed down on its side.
Together with another two men from their crew – Cameron Chalmers and Billy Chmielewski – the tradies pulled over and sprinted to the wreckage,breaking through the skylights on the roof and ripping the covers off with their bare hands.
At first,a group of schoolchildren charged towards the openings. When the rush of escapees stopped,Chalmers and Eastway crawled through each skylight and into the bus.
Firefighter Reg Stott holds his hand up to let the crew know the bus had been lifted high enough off the ground.Supplied
Chalmers said the bus interior felt like a plane cabin,except the blue-carpeted bus roof was stained with dirt and littered with glass.
They were taken aback by the number of children peering back at him.
“There was a lot of kids … just faces,” Chalmers recalled. “We couldn’t believe how many people were in there,you know?”
One by one,they unclipped the seatbelts they could and passed the injured children through to their mates on the other side. Then the men saw that some of the children weren’t moving – they were trapped.
By that time,there had already been a rush of triple zero calls.
“You’re going to need a lot more than one ambulance,” the first caller,repairman Brent Ferguson,said. “It’s a few kids.”
‘We did everything we could’:No child left behind
In his toppled vehicle,bus driver Stanley regained consciousness. After a few moments,he realised he was on the ground,surrounded by the glass from the smashed door.
Stanley’s ankle was broken,and his back hurt where it hit the glass,but he got up and began helping the children in the front rows reach the tradesmen’s hands.
Suddenly alert to the risk of fire,the bus driver pulled himself through the open skylight.
He limped around the outside of the bus to check for fuel leaks and brushed past the growing crowd of people who pulled over and wanted to help him.
The scene became chaotic as rescuers and families arrived to help the children.Wayne Taylor
Then he realised the bus was still running and crawled back inside to switch it off,silently thanking the tradesmen working to free his 45 passengers.
Having cut the engine,Stanley looked for another way to get more kids off the bus. Pain shot up his leg as he shifted his weight onto the broken ankle,kicking the front windscreen with the other foot. As one of the tradies joined him,their boots cracked the thick glass – but it didn’t budge.
“We did everything we could,” Stanley recalled. “I didn’t do it alone. Those people,they’re absolutely wonderful people that were just doing it before I even realised what happened.”
As more people pulled up to help,the scene became more chaotic. The smell of diesel made someone call out for a fire extinguisher;several were retrieved from cars.
To the dismay of his wife,Sussanne,who rushed to the scene after hearing about the crash on the news,Stanley refused to leave his bus. Not until everyone was off.
‘Charlotte’s still on the bus’:Every parent’s worst nightmare
Jaimi-Leigh Meilak was waiting for her ex-partner to return from the bus stop with their children,Savana,7,and Maison Saha,11,when her phone buzzed. There’d been a crash near their school,he told her.
She told him not to worry,saying the school contacted parents if there was so much as a bingle in the car park.
Even so,she started to worry. Then she heard sirens.
Pacing the kitchen,she gripped her phone and called the school,where a staff member answered,then put her on hold to get answers.
“It’s our bus,” the school receptionist told her when she returned to the phone.
Meilak and her ex-partner had driven in the wrong direction to other notorious crash areas when a whirl of ambulances and fire brigades emerged,prompting them to change course.
Stopped by a police roadblock,Meilak tried to keep her voice steady. “My kids are on that bus,” she croaked. She was waved through.
Memories of the scene and being reunited with her children are blurry. Meilak recalled that her relief at seeing Savana and Maison was quickly replaced by fear for other children. Did their parents even know about the crash?
Police remove children’s shoes and belongings from the wreckage after the bus was righted the following day.Jason South
She saw Alyce Lloyd,10,among the shaken children who were sitting on the lawn after being pulled from the wreckage – but without her sister Charlotte. Just one year separating them in age,those siblings were a package deal. Meilak knew if they weren’t together,it wasn’t by choice.
Their mother,Shae Hopkins,answered her call.
“We just jumped straight in the car,” Hopkins said. “There was just police,ambulance and fire trucks everywhere.”
Hopkins sped past the backed-up traffic on the wrong side of the road before being stopped by police. She abandoned her car with her mother inside and sprinted to the bus.
A helicopter overhead drowned out other sounds,whipping up the grass where Hopkins finally spotted her daughter.
“I ran straight to Alyce,hugged her,and the first thing Alyce said to me was:‘Charlotte’s still on the bus.’”
The scene at the Exford school bus crash site.Jason South
‘This is not OK’:Miss Campo and the walking wounded
Meilak had not been on the phone to the school for long before principal Lisa Campo,on her way to a staff meeting,heard the receptionist yell out:“It’s our kids.”
The principal rushed to her car to get to the scene,most of her staff following suit. Some stayed behind to phone families.
Because it’s a job requirement,and because it is her nature,Campo remembered trying to stay optimistic. It was probably only something minor,she told herself.
“I drove right in. There was a group of our kids standing down the side road,” she recalled.
Exford Primary School principal Lisa Campo dashed to the scene when she heard the news.Jason South
“I said:‘Guys,Miss Campo’s here. It’s OK. You’re OK.’ And then I was looking at them and looking at the bus going:‘This is not OK.’”
By the time Campo got to the scene,about 15 children had already been pulled out by the tradies. It had taken minutes. Within the next few minutes,15 more would be prised from the steel rim of the skylights the rescuers had smashed through.
Some of the children were already wearing the tradies’ high-vis jumpers to keep warm.
Later,police would refer to this group as “the walking wounded”.
Campo had given herself the task that came most naturally:intercepting parents as they arrived,preparing them for the possibility of injuries.
Of course,some parents had children still trapped on the bus. She spoke to them,too.
‘I could’ve lifted that bus to the moon’:Jaws of life and a calm,soft voice
There were eight children left on the bus. Reg Stott – who at the time was the leading firefighter at Fire Station 56 Melton – turned to the small girl who’d gripped his ankle:Charlotte Lloyd.
“You are not going to die,” he reassured her.
The children were screaming. The adults were shrieking. “It was emotionally charged,” Stott said.
At the start,the tradies were heroes,but now they were getting in the way.
“I remember saying to one guy quite particularly,‘You’re standing exactly where I need to work,’” Stott said.
When it was just Stott’s crew and the children,20 years of experience at emergency scenes kicked in as he started to talk through the rescue.
Charlotte let go of Stott’s ankle and put her head back down on her arm. “Every so often I’d put my hand on her shoulder,and she’d just go,‘I’m OK.’”
The intersection of Exford and Murphys roads,where the crash occurred,pictured this week.Jason South
Three children were trapped at the front,four were stuck close together in the middle – including an entwined Charlotte and Cadin – and Awheata was up the back with another child.
They needed to lift the wreckage.
First,the jaws of life were deployed. Three of Stott’s crew spaced themselves out through the bus and used hydraulic spreaders to raise the wreckage by four centimetres. Within minutes,four children were freed.
Among them,a shaky Cadin walked through the front windscreen and into the arms of emergency services. After 40 minutes of her being trapped,he didn’t look back to see if Charlotte was coming – a memory he feels bad about.
The bus had landed half on the road shoulder and half on the soft ground. Unable to find solid ground to lift the back,rescuers changed tack.
A pressure airbag was inflated while firefighters worked with spreaders.
A few minutes later,the giant balloon lifted the bus at the rear,releasing the final four children.
“As we were lifting,I could see kids being passed through the front windscreen,” Stott said. “I could’ve lifted that bus to the moon.”
‘Tell me what you need’:From helicopter to hospital and a call from the premier
The last off the bus were among the worst injured – their freed limbs now needed urgent medical care. Taken to the Royal Children’s Hospital by helicopter and ambulance,Charlotte,Ashton and Cadin were the first to arrive.
An emergency doctor on duty remembers being surprised by how quiet it was:,and the entire hospital was ready to respond.
Four operating theatres ran simultaneously to treat the seven children who required surgery overnight.
During one of the hours-long procedures,a specialist left the theatre to pull parents Daniel Pikari and Candice Naera aside. They were told their daughter,the singing schoolgirl with pink-streaked hair,had lost her arm.
Awheata’s arm was amputated after the school bus crash.Wayne Taylor
Meanwhile,Exford Primary School had transformed into a waiting room for children being assessed by field doctors. Teachers gave out warm clothes and hot drinks as darkness fell.
It was almost 11pm when an exhausted Campo,the school principal,finally thought to go home – close to seven hours after the receptionist had raised the alarm. She was packing her things when then-premier Daniel Andrews called.
“Whatever you need,the answer will be yes,” Andrews told her. “But you have to tell me what you need.”
Campo didn’t know where to start. It’s a question she still turns over today.
New roads? The speed limit has been dropped on the road leading to Exford Primary School,and further traffic safety works are under way.
Campo wanted slower speed limits.Jason South
Mostly,Campo says,she needs what she needed back on May 16 last year:for everyone to be OK.
Today,Awheata has learnt to swim and can “do everything by myself now” with new technology bought by the school. Lunchtimes typically were inside with the “broken wing club”,and she wasn’t quite back on the school bus when she spoke toThe Age last year.
Levi Murphy,another child on the bus that day,spent several nights in hospital after fracturing his vertebrae. The crash meant months of specialist appointments as well as months of therapy. His little brother,Nate,escaped physical injuries but has trouble sleeping.
Their mother,Belinda Murphy,said he suffers from anxiety. “Unfortunately,although Nate didn’t have any bad physical injuries,his have all been mental,” she said.
“We’re just finding a new normal.”
Nate Murphy and Levi Murphy.Joe Armao
Charlotte,whose elbow was smashed and whose eyelid was butterflied open,counts herself lucky not to have lost an eye.
Both Charlotte and her sister Alyce have nightmares and are seeing a trauma psychologist.
Cadin,the boy who lay across her in the wreckage,is in his first year of high school this year,though he has had to miss a bit. Cadin has problems remembering things and his headaches can be debilitating,his mother Naomi Maynard said.
She said treating his post-concussion syndrome meant trips to a specialist each week. “It breaks my heart to still see him struggle with such simple things nearly 12 months later.”
‘That’s the bit I struggle with’:A bus driver speaks for the first time and the wheels go round and round
After months of delay,truck driver Jamie Gleeson will face a Melbourne court on Monday,charged with four counts of dangerous driving causing serious injury.
The father of two,who was cleared by initial testing of being affected by drugs or alcohol,could face a lengthy jail term.
On April 30,bus driver Graham Stanley will be announced as the recipient of a citizen’s commendation award,nominated by police for his bravery.
Having avoided the spotlight since he last drove the Exford bus,Stanley saw his passengers for the first time at a community fundraiser.
In his Melton West home last month,he teared up remembering the hugs from the kids,and the words of reassurance from their parents.
Passing drivers and teachers rushed to rescue and comfort the 45 children involved in the "horrific" crash,west of Melbourne.
“They were my babies,the whole lot of them. They’re beautiful,” he said.
Stanley has never spoken publicly about the crash,preferring to let the tales of heroism focus on first responders and the children.
Sitting at the kitchen table of his suburban home,wife Sussanne by his side,Stanley admits the award has helped reassure him that people think he’s not to blame.
He is still being treated for back injuries and receives therapy to help with the trauma of that day. He questions whether he’ll ever go back to driving.
“I felt my responsibility was to get them home every day … get them to school and get them home,” he said. “That’s the bit I struggle with,that I failed on that day.”
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