When I was a young 'un back in the late 70's we lived in a nice suburb about a 20 minute bus ride from the CBD. At that stage all the action was in the city and there were no real suburban shopping malls or anything like that. So if you went shopping you tended to go to the city. If you went to the movies, off to the city you'd go.
Anyhoo, I have distinct and vivid memories of hopping on the bus by myself from that house (the 202 if you want to know) and going into the city to go and check out whatever I happened to want to check out. Most often space lego, but I liked book stores and even record stores as well. I would hop on the bus from the stop a few doors down from ours and head into town, piss fart around and then make my way down to St Georges Terrace in the banking district when it was time to head back home, as that's where the bus stop was at to get me back.
The thing is we moved out of that house when I was going into 2nd term grade 5. That means at the absolute oldest I was 9 years old when we moved out of that house. So yeah, when I was 8 and 9 I used to ride on the bus by myself into the city when I was bored. And I didn't think anything of it.
