"33 days."
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That is the first thing Wendy Aston says when she starts talking about her husband Jack at the family's Brown Hill home on Wednesday.
She and her children Meg and Ben are counting down the days until the appeal against Jack's conviction and sentence is heard in Melbourne on October 7.
The Ballarat 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.
Mr Aston was sentenced to five years and three months jail, with a minimum of two-and-a-half years, on December 17.
He has already been in prison almost nine months and it will be almost 10 months by the time of the appeal.
"That is a summer, an autumn, a winter and into spring," Mrs Aston says.
More than 150 people are expected to come together on Sunday to show their support for Mr Aston during a rally on the steps of Parliament House in Melbourne.
Mrs Aston says it will be their 'last hurrah' to demonstrate public support for Mr Aston before the appeal date.
We just want him to come home.
- Wendy Aston
Mr Aston's story has resonated with people around Victoria; the family has received a flood of letters, messages and petition signatures to support his appeal effort in the nine months since his conviction.
Rallies held in Melbourne and Ballarat in December brought an estimated 500 people together to protest the severity of his sentence.
Mr Aston's supporters have started their own initiatives as a visual show of their support, the most recent a movement to tie yellow ribbons on mailboxes as part of the call to #FREEJACK.
Mrs Aston says she expects many people from bus companies in Melbourne to attend the rally on Sunday.
One Melbourne bus driver who did not personally know the family before the accident has been to visit Mr Aston in prison twice and has played an integral part in organising the rally.
"Something he said to me when he first met me was it could have happened to anybody, any bus driver," daughter Meg says.
Mrs Aston says the family often receive emotional messages of support from people they did not know.
"It is people putting themselves in somebody else's shoes. There's not that many people who can do it but when they do it is pretty amazing isn't it?"
The family continues to speak to Mr Aston every day and visit him at Middleton Prison every weekend.
It is people putting themselves in somebody else's shoes. There's not that many people who can do it but when they do it is pretty amazing isn't it?
- Wendy Aston
Mrs Aston says they are trying to remain positive to get through each day until the appeal.
"Whatever way it goes we are just going to have to handle it. We've just got to get there," she says.
"We have got nothing left in us. We just talk all the time now about 'when dad comes home'. It can be as little as 'when dad comes home he is chopping that tree down or he is fixing that light'.
"Today Jack said to the psychiatrist he feels like he is stuck in a time machine. He said 'I can't think of what has been and I can't think of what is ahead' and the situation he is in now isn't any good either. He has got nowhere to think.
"We have still just got to keep counting and try to keep as positive as we can but there is not much left in us.
"We just want him to come home."
The rally will be held at Parliament House in Melbourne on Sunday from 2pm to 3pm.
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