Hundreds of people are expected to gather at Melbourne’s most battered overpass on Sunday in a show of support for Ballarat bus driver Jack Aston.
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His devastated family are channeling their anger into a campaign to #FREEJACK and improve the Montague Street bridge.
It is to get it out there that he is a good man, that it (the sentence) is wrong and so many people who don’t even know him have said it is wrong.
- Meg Aston
Jack was sentenced to five years and three months with a minimum of two-and-a-half years jail in the County Court on Monday.
The Gold Bus driver crashed into a low clearance bridge on Montague Street in South Melbourne in February 2016 and was found guilty of six counts of negligently causing serious injury.
Daughter Meg Aston, 21, created a Facebook event for the gathering at the notorious bridge to be held at 1pm on Sunday as a visible show of the immense support for her dad.
“It is to get it out there that he is a good man, that it (the sentence) is wrong and so many people who don’t even know him have said it is wrong,” she said.
It will be an emotional return to the site which was the source of almost three years of trauma for the Aston family.
Meg last went under the Montague Street bridge as a passenger with friends on the way to a party in Melbourne just a few weeks ago before her father’s sentencing.
“I didn’t know we were going to go there. I wasn’t paying attention to the area,” she said.
“We were driving and then I realised where we were and we went straight under it.
“It is not until you are there you realise the reality of how low it is.”
Mother Wendy Aston said Meg was so distraught after seeing the bridge where her Jack could have died she had to drive to Melbourne to bring her home.
“It was a shock seeing it because it was getting so close to the sentencing. It was a reality of what could happen to dad,” Meg said.
More than 200 people have already shown interest in the Facebook event for the Montague Street gathering and Meg’s post has been shared more than 220 times.
Wendy and Meg said the support they have received from hundreds of people showed Jack’s five-year sentence was out of line with community expectations. The family will appeal the sentence.
“Hopefully on Sunday we can show how much of an impact it (the sentence) has had on people and how wrong it is,” Meg said.
More than 1000 people have signed a petition on Change.org called Justice for Jack in a show of support for a reduced sentence.
For now, Wendy, Meg and her brother Ben, 19, are taking each day at a time. They will visit Jack on Saturday for his birthday and on Christmas Day.
It is when the holiday season is over, and family and friends go back to their regular schedules – when the family can not go to Gold Class together to see the new Ned Kelly film Jack was an extra in, when Wendy goes to ask him to fix something in the backyard and remembers he is not there, when Ben goes back to work without his colleague, his dad, by his side, when Jack’s work boots don’t move from the same spot by the front door, when their dog Flake cries at the porch – that the reality of continuing life without their loving father and husband will hit hardest.
Meg is also working on scheduling a gathering in Ballarat on Sunday afternoon for those who can not make it to Melbourne, with further details to come.
An appeal must be lodged within 28 days from the date of sentence.