Gold Bus driver David Hustwaite saw ten-year-old Charlie Lorch appear out of the early morning half-light at approximately 6am on Saturday morning as he was taking female student rowers from Ballarat and Clarendon College to the Head of the River in Geelong.

At first unsure of whether he was watching a jogger or an animal, his concern turned to horror as he realised it was a small child who walked down the roadside embankment and straight into the path of his bus.

Mr Hustwaite said he was grateful to be driving a brand new vehicle equipped with an anti-lock braking system, which enabled him to maneuver around Charlie without having to brake harshly or veer too far into the opposite lane.

He says it's just a matter of luck that Charlie wandered onto the road far enough ahead for him to take evasive action.

"I've found him, I think, it's well past Lumeah Drive that goes up to the left?"

"That's about where I've first spotted him. I didn't know it was a human; I thought maybe it was a jogger, but it was too short. I thought then maybe it was a dog or a horse; you could just see the silhouette. 

"And as I got closer and it came down the embankment, I thought, 'it must be a jogger', and then I realised - 'that's a little boy!' And he turned just like kangaroos do if you're out on the road driving; he turned and just came straight for the bloody bus."

"Poor Zoe (Ballarat and Clarendon College rowing coach), she was sitting next to me, she just screamed; the girls were up the back of the bus and most of them were asleep. After I got past him, I said to Zoe, 'I hope I missed him; we've got to go back, there's something wrong here.'"

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After driving around Charlie, Mr Hustwaite realised he couldn't stop safely on the highway and drove into the roundabout at Buninyong, with the College's head of rowing Ross Henderson following behind in a vehicle towing the school's rowing boats.

To their horror, they were preceded through the roundabout by a prime mover towing a low-loader trailer travelling towards Ballarat at some speed, said Mr Hustwaite.

"They were doing roadworks or resealing, and he came through the roundabout really quick, and I thought, 'Oh shit, he's going to hit that kid,' because he would have been completely on the road by then."

He says they saw Charlie lying on the side of the road, and Mr Hustwaite's immediate thought was that he'd been hit by the truck, which failed to stop.

"There was no movement, and I thought, 'has he been flicked?' The truck probably wouldn't have seen him. It was pitch black.

"That really upset me, because there's just no… you just think, 'truck; he's on the road; this can't be good.' Anyway I stopped and flew out of the bus and got over to him. I could see he was alive because… but there was just nothing; he was saying nothing. I didn't know he was intellectually disabled; I just thought he was asleep. I lifted the little boy up and held him and cuddled him and tried to keep him calm, he was pretty calm."

By this time Mr Henderson had pulled up and the Ballarat and Clarendon College team and Mr Hustwaite placed Charlie on a seat on the rowing trailer, wrapped reversed in Zoe's leather jacket to both keep him warm and enable them to restrain him while police were called.

After some time Charlie's mother arrived, distraught that her son had somehow escaped their secure home. After being told Charlie was safe and was being looked after, she explained the trouble she was having keeping her son safely within their house and the efforts she was going to in trying to source a fingerprint locking system.

Both Mr Hustwaite and the BCC crew undertook counselling and debriefing following the incident.

"It's funny how your adrenaline kicks in," Mr Hustwaite says.

"I went down to Geelong and dropped the team off. I stopped at Meredith on the return and had a cup of coffee and rang my wife and said, 'this was a bit close'. You learn to deal with experiences on the road. But when I got home on Saturday night - it hit me like a brick."