charters, with each coach carrying the “Available for Charter” signage. It was in November of 1954 that the Hughes and Vale legal challenge involving Section 92 of the Constitution and the States’ taxation of interstate trade had finally been decided in the complainants’ favour by the Privy Council. It seems not to have been mere coincidence that within a few weeks on 27 December, the then General Manager of Pioneer Mr C McDonald, announced that Pioneer would inaugurate daily interstate Ansair Flxible Clipper express passenger services between Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, simultaneously commencing from Sydney and Melbourne on 24 January 1955, and extending to Brisbane and Adelaide within weeks. As for Rex Law, his business attention …show more content…
By this time Rex had accumulated sufficient confidence, experience and capital to look into enlarging and modernizing the fleet in readiness to expand his interstate tours operation. This eventually led him to Leyland Motors at Hendra, on the corner of Hedley Avenue and Nudgee Road, right over the road from Brisbane’s Eagle Farm airport. Leyland had in 1953, under their new English expat’ General Manager, an amply proportioned pleasant gentleman named Eric Wilkes, with his equally pleasant sales manager Bob Slack, taken over one of the large wooden wool store buildings right on the southern corner of that intersection as their sales and service location for imported Leyland truck and bus chassis. This building still exists today in 2013. The decision was taken, one of great significance as it was by far the largest purchase commitment so far in Rex’s business life, which would eventually see three new Leyland Tiger Cub chassis delivered, the first (No 8) to Shuttlewood’s bodyworks at Sylvan Road,