Waking up in Geelong

A few years ago I discovered that Google Image Search applies OCR to indexed images, enabling it to return results for text that have never appeared online, and I’ve found more examples over the years since. Well, now I’ve found yet another!

Who’s that bus?

Back in 2023 I photographed a Transit Systems coach, with registration plate 5629AO.

I wanted to see if I’d photographed this coach before, so I plugged ‘5629AO’ into Google Search – which didn’t return anything of mine.

But a photo dated 2015 on Flickr titled ‘Big White Bus‘, with registration plate 5629AO visible – the same bus photographed.

And an article in the Bendigo Advertiser dated 2014 titled ‘Bus driver trapped by live power lines after incident‘, illustrated with a photo of the bus involved – registration 5629AO.

As for the history of the bus itself, the Australian Bus Fleet Lists entry for 5629AO says it entered service in 2005.

And I didn’t think that would even work!

I ended up in a discussion recently around Australian bus manufacturing, where imported chassis have bodies built atop them locally, and was trying to find out which bus operators use Iveco chassis – so I figured I’d try searching my photo gallery to see if I could find any.

And lo and behold, as search for “wongm Iveco” actually turned up highly relevant entries.

From the first row – a photo captioned “Moonee Valley Coaches #92 2266AO on St Albans Road, Sunshine North” appears because the bus has an ‘Iveco’ badge on the front.

Same applies to their photo captioned “HG Corporate Buses minibus XV95BF with luggage trailer at William Street and Flinders Lane”.

“Hi-rail weed spray trucks at Somerton” too.

“Moonee Valley Coaches #87 BS02AL at Swanston and Flinders Street”.

“Moonee Valley Coaches bus #82 9682AO on out of service at Moonee Ponds Junction”.

“Moonee Valley Coaches bus #90 2264AO on route 506 along Glenlyon Road at Lygon Street”.

And “McKenzie’s coach 1829AO at the Southern Cross coach terminal”.

I wouldn’t think that such a small piece of text like the badge on the front of a bus would get picked up by Google, but turns out they can do it.

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