THERE’S a new kid on the Port of Portland block and she’s the darling of all who know her. She’s simply known as Evie.

Evie is the new electric mini-bus acquired by the Portland Seafarers Mission for transporting visiting ship crews around town. She’s been quietly going about her business for a couple of months now and winning hearts wherever she goes.

For manager of the Mission, Neville Manson, she’s “brilliant”.  

“We’ve always had petrol Toyota Hi-Ace buses before and this drives the same. We’ve also always bought second hand and Evie is our first new vehicle. It was chairman Ern Harrison’s passion to go electric, but we didn’t think that it was doable.

 “The comparable costs were $80,000 for a brand new petrol model versus $115,000 for the EV, but when we applied for the grants we found we were able to meet the costs.”

And while the two major grants ­– from the ITS Seafarers Trust and the Australian Maritime Welfare Society – didn’t make up all the funding, the local Mission was able to use money from its own savings, “contributing to half of the cost of the bus”, Mr Manson said.

The funds from selling its old bus to another Mission centre in Eden also went into the money pool, and the Mission also received generous donations from around town, “from shipping agents and some churches”, he said. These donors are acknowledged by the various logos on the bus.

The Mission’s savings account is invaluable for helping to upgrade its vehicles every three years, Mr Manson said. “It’s important to keep them relatively new and reliable and looking good.”

He believes the Mission will quickly make up the savings spent on buying Evie by saving on fuel costs. “And because we’re using her mainly as a shuttle service from the port and back, we can easily make the range and charge it up overnight at the Mission. We just plug it into a standard power point. It’s been fabulous.

“We don’t travel over huge range and don’t use it between 10 o’clock at night and 10 o’clock in the morning so we’ve got 12 hours of triple charge to charge it up.”

The purpose of the bus is to transport seafarers from the port into town. For safety reasons, visiting crews are not permitted to walk within the secured port area and need to be transported out.

Evie’s predecessors have essentially always transported crews anywhere they want to go and this will continue, said Mr Manson, but officially the Henty Street bus stop is the drop off and pick up point.

The Mission also does bus runs to and from Melbourne for crews flying in or out at the end of their contracts or beginning them. It’s all paid for by the company that is engaging the crew, so it’s also an income to the mission. But at this stage there is no plan to use Evie for these longer trips, Mr Manson said.

“Access to top up power is just too unreliable at the moment.”