Land Ho! By Ferry from Tasmania to Melbourne

On this trip I was hosted by Tourism Tasmania and MONA FOMA.

I've visited Tasmania many times over the years - eight times, in fact - and yet I'd never travelled to or from the island state by sea rather than air.

It was time to fix that.

On the outward leg of my latest visit, to Launceston for the MONA FOMA arts festival, I flew. It's a quick flight from Melbourne, just 45 minutes in the air, but subject to all the usual hassles of reaching the airport, being tested for explosives for the 4,357th time at security, and being squeezed into cattle-truck conditions on the plane itself.

On the way back, however, I was boarding this entirely different vessel - Spirit of Tasmania I, one of a duo of big car ferries that sail between Devonport, Tasmania and Melbourne, Victoria each night:

Entering via the rear loading area of the ship, foot passengers head up escalators to Deck 7:

As you can see from the sign, this is the social hub of the vessel, with most of the dining and entertainment options, though there additional bars and kids' areas on Decks 9 and 10. On Deck 7 there's a reading room (oddly without books), a bar, two cinema screens, a gaming lounge, tourist info, a shop with souvenirs and sandwiches, and a restaurant which serves a fairly unexciting buffet meal:

Heading upward via the blue lift (there are also colour-coded stairwells to aid orientation), I walked all the way toward the bow to find my cabin:

Most of the sleeping accommodation is on Deck 8. There's a variety of options, including reclining chairs, berths in shared cabins along the lines of a hostel dorm, and private cabins for two to four people. A lot of family groups use the Spirit, taking their cars with them, so these multi-person cabins are popular.

(As an aside, a couple of interstate travellers I met in Launceston pointed out another advantage of travelling to Tasmania with your own car - you can load it up with great Tassie food and cases of local wine! Try doing that on a Boeing 737.)

I, however, had scored the poshest option, a Deluxe Cabin. Located right at the front of Deck 8, on the starboard corner, it was basically a hotel room with queen-size bed, chairs, TV, bar fridge and bathroom. Very comfortable indeed:

After dropping my backpack in my cabin I strolled around the ship, stepping out to have a look at Bass Strait after we left Tasmania:

After dinner I turned in and had a reasonably good sleep. Bass Strait is notorious for its unpredictably rough waters, but luckily this was a calm night. Once or twice I was woken by a loud clanging noise, which I suspect was a high wave breaking against the bow, but otherwise it was peaceful, though always with a slight sense of swaying movement.

The only problem about the crossing is the ungodly hour it arrives at Port Melbourne: 6am. I set my alarm for 5am so I could have a shower and repack my backpack. Then I headed up to Deck 10 to avail myself of the services of the barista at work there, then took my coffee outside Deck 8 to see the view:

Utterly beautiful. And with the terminus of the number 109 tram just 400 metres away, I was soon offboard and on my way home to Melbourne's city centre. A great experience, with vastly more comfort and character than an equivalent flight.

For more information and to make bookings, visit the Spirit of Tasmania website.

Ballyhoo on the Bally Hooley Railway, Port Douglas

On my visit to Port Douglas I was hosted by the Bally Hooley Railway.

When visiting Cairns last year, I was unable to ride the Kuranda Scenic Railway because of cancellations due to rockslides. So I took a bus to Port Douglas to try out a substitute: the Bally Hooley Railway. 

Parked at a platform at one end of the marina’s shopping arcade was an open-sided train. Its carriages’ bright yellow wooden benches, decorative wrought-iron doors, and firetruck red roof made it look like a funfair novelty, but it had an industrial heritage. 

“The carriage beds are from real sugar cane bins,” said the young train driver wearing a baggy blue cap, referring to the carts hauled by narrow-gauge locomotives through the cane fields of the region.

These modified carriages were attached to an original loco from the cane fields, a blocky, blunt-nosed diesel workhorse that looked like it packed a lot of power for something that ran along track a mere 610 millimetres (two feet) wide. On this damp Sunday it was half-full of day-trippers waiting for it to chug down to its terminus and back, calling at three stops along the way.

The station was an attractive timber structure pained white, with a cafe serving meals at tables on the platform beneath ceiling fans and wicker light shades. Throw in a gin and tonic, and it could have been the Last Days of the Raj.

We pulled slowly out. “It averages 15 kilometres per hour,” said our guide via a microphone, providing a commentary as we progressed. As we passed the waters of the marina, he gave a sketch of the late disgraced businessman Christopher Skase, whose Sheraton Mirage Resort was largely responsible for Port Douglas’ transformation into an upmarket tourist town in the 1980s.

Then we passed the town’s waste water treatment plant, and a sign advising of a coming “sludge treatment upgrade”.

According to our host, this sugar cane line was built over a century ago to serve the sugar industry of inland Mossman, whose refinery still produced over a million tonnes of sugar per week. So Port Douglas had got its own railway eventually, even if it was for sugar rather than people.

Sugar was brought down by train to be loaded onto ships at Port Douglas, but improved road transport had made the railway redundant. Now it had become a brightly-painted tourist train, usually pulled by steam locomotives at weekends (though we’d lucked out because an accredited driver couldn’t be found that day).

Port Douglas is on a stumpy peninsula nosing into the Coral Sea, so as we moved south we could see the mountains of the Great Dividing Range across the water to our right. Closer to hand were eucalypts, and mangroves beyond them.

There were two stations between the Marina Station and the train’s terminus. The first was at the Mirage Country Club, where the railway was lined by immaculate if unused tennis courts. The second was at the QT Resort, whose long white building shared the marina’s colonial tropicana look. 

We passed older blocks of housing built by Skase for his construction workers, then arrived at the terminus, St Crispin’s Station, which housed a cafe with water views.

I stood with other rail fans to watch the crew drive the locomotive onto a turntable (see video clip above), then turn it through 180 degrees using nothing more than physical strength. It then ran past our carriages on a parallel line, to position itself for the return run north. It was a delight to watch the operation, there was something pleasingly analogue about the simple technology involved.

Back aboard, I found myself seated with new fellow passengers, an affectionate couple on a day out. 

“Pity it’s not steam today,” said the man, meaning the locomotive. I demurred, pointing out the diesel loco was just as much a part of sugar cane farming history. He didn’t seem convinced.

On the return leg, the host pointed out lipstick palms with their red trunks, and told us how expensive it was for the shire council to maintain the thousands of coconut palms in the area, which posed a potentially fatal hazard via falling fruit.

We passed more tennis courts and I noticed two of them were a dark grey.

“See that tennis court?” asked the voice. “That’s covered with algae. It’s a non-stop job keeping things clean in the Wet.”

He then detailed all the items in the 47 tons of equipment that Captain James Cook threw overboard from the Endeavour north of there in 1770, when the ship ran aground on a reef. National Geographic had led a recent expedition to recover it, and salvaged items were on display at the museum in Cooktown.

“It wasn’t until the 1960s that Port Douglas was linked to the electricity grid,” he said, moving forward in time. “Just up the road from here to the north, it’s still the same.”

He finished by detailing the recent acquisition of the marina by Syrian billionaire Ghassan Aboud, and his plans to bulldoze the current building and rebuild in an even more upmarket style, catering for super yachts (whatever they are). Port Douglas had lost some of its celebrity-fuelled glam since the global financial crisis a decade before, so this was a chance to revive it.

It was hard to imagine Port Douglas was once a serious contender for chief city of Far North Queensland, but if the Ranges railway had been built from here it would now be a glittering tropical metropolis. Instead, it had bumped along the decades as a sugar port, then a sleepy fishing village, and latterly a getaway place for the well-heeled and super-rich. 

On the way back to Cairns, I asked the bus driver if he was worried the new owner’s plans for the marina might fall over.

“Of course,” he said. “But someone has to give it a try.”

Find timetables and other info at the Bally Hooley Railway website.

Glaciers and the Red Bus in Montana, USA

In 2009 I took my first-ever trip to the USA, courtesy of the Montana Office of Tourism and Virgin Australia. My resulting newspaper article about a visit to Glacier National Park never went online, so here it is for your enjoyment...

Everything about Montana is big, from the towering Rocky Mountains in its west to the sprawling plains of the east.

And up the top of its “big” list are the glaciers and peaks of Glacier National Park, a spectacular spread of craggy mountains, glacial lakes and huge chunks of ancient ice nestled between them.

“It’s incredible to first timers,” says our driver and tour guide Jana Grindheim. “People don’t know about Glacier, it’s not as famous as Yellowstone. But it’s like nothing they’ve ever seen, and they’re just amazed at the mountains.”

As we progress into the park past the waters of Lake McDonald I begin to see what Jana means, via glimpses of enormous sharp-edged peaks to the northeast. The evocatively-named Going-to-the-Sun Road may be flat and spacious now, but soon it’ll be transporting us upward, past rugged mountains on one side and a sheer drop on the other.

Though its namesake glaciers are shrinking as the climate changes, those that remain are diverse and magnificent, especially within the Many Glacier Valley in the park’s east.

However, the mountain scenery alone is sensational enough to prompt a visit, and we’ll be getting a full dose of it as we traverse the entire Going-to-the-Sun Road from Apgar to St Mary.

The road is a story in itself, an epic construction project completed in 1933.

It borrows its name from a mountain along its route, named from a Native American Blackfeet legend about a deity who came from the sun and taught them how to hunt, then returned home after leaving his image on the slopes.

We’ll be hugging the narrow road in a vehicle that’s a tourist attraction in its own right, one of the park’s fleet of Red Buses. These bright red open-topped vehicles, resembling an extended car with a fold-back roof, each hold 17 people and have been used for tours of the park since the mid-1930s.

With its sleek lines and a radiator grille that looks like it was swiped from an art deco limousine, our Red Bus is a very stylish way to explore Glacier. On top of all that, Glacier is the only national park to still be operating these classic vehicles, as other parks retired their fleets decades ago (take that, Yellowstone).

The Red Bus drivers are a special breed are known as “jammers”, a name inherited from the days when the gears of the vehicles would grind and jam as they hauled their passengers up the slopes.

Our jammer for the day, Jana, is fond of her daily grind. “I get to drive on the beautiful red buses that everybody loves,” she says, “And I get to see Glacier National Park, the most beautiful place in the world, every day.”

Sounds like a recipe for job satisfaction to me. And as we pass beyond Avalanche Creek and its picturesque boardwalk through the cedars, the landscape opens up, we begin to climb, and I see what she loves about the place.

For it is grand - there’s no other word for it. Beyond the cedar forest the mountain slopes stretch high above us, bare and craggy as they reach sharply defined peaks, tinged purple in the midday heat.

The most startling formation is the Garden Wall, a long narrow ridge of sharp, rocky projections streaked with horizontal bands of colour. It’s so narrow that in places it would be possible to sit astride it, with legs dangling along each slope.

There are also signs of how powerful Dame Nature can be when she rubs her hands and gets down to work. Pausing the bus, Jana points out a massive trail of damage down the slope above us, where dozens of trees lie fallen.

This was the work of a mighty avalanche that plummeted through some time during winter, blocking the road; because it’s closed during the icy months, no-one saw it happen.

To the west is the beautiful Heavens Peak, at 2739 metres one of the higher mountains in the park, with a dusting of snow despite the Indian Summer warmth.

We’re reminded again of the park’s lofty snow and ice as we pass the Weeping Wall, a section of rock constantly flowing with run-off from the glaciers above.

Finally, having passed a profusion of impressive peaks and peered down into distant tree-lined valleys, trying to not think too hard about the tiny stone wall stopping errant vehicles from plunging to their doom, we arrive at Logan Pass.

It’s the highest point on the road and a natural spot for a break, with its visitor centre and sign marking the location of the Continental Divide, which runs right through the park. A geographical curiosity, this line divides North America into two sections from which all water flows downhill toward either the Pacific or the Atlantic, depending on which side it falls.

Logan Pass is also a rest stop along the park’s numerous hiking trails. While the rest of our group troops off to have a look at the neighbourhood, I linger by the bus to ask Jana about hiking. Being Australian, however, I’d be a little nervous about the idea of encountering bears along the way. Has she ever seen any?

“Oh yeah,” she says casually. “In the Many Glacier Valley, just over these mountains, there are a lot of grizzly bears. By the Many Glacier Hotel you can see them, not ten feet away.”

I’d rather be viewing them from a bit further away than three metres, but Jana is reassuring. “I’ve never had any dangerous situations with bears. Usually when you see them they don’t care about you, unless you scare them.”

Making a mental note not to scare any bears, I return to the topic of hiking. Does she have a favourite walk?

“I have several,” she nods. “There’s one, Gunsight Path, which is a 20 mile hike with a backpack. It’s incredible. You hike up past lakes, snowfields, waterfalls, and camp at Lake Ellen Wilson. It looks like an infinity pool, dropping off the edge of the earth.

"You also have an option to continue to a glacier. The other one you can do from here is the Floral Park hike, and you walk across Sperry Glacier on the way. There are rivers and crevasses and it’s amazing.”

It’s almost an anticlimax to get back into our old Red Bus and drive east for the descent to St Mary, sighting the Jackson Glacier as we go.

But I do get a small adrenaline rush when we briefly leave the bus to walk through the trees to look at the tiny Wild Goose Island in the middle of St Mary Lake.

We might see a bear, I imagine. But we don’t, not even a small one.

As we head out of Glacier, I discover that Jana is on her way out as well.

“My husband and I fell in love with the park the first time we came here but now we’re joining the Peace Corps, and we’ve got one last hurrah with the mountains.”

Will she miss being a jammer?

“Yeah,” she says firmly. “Best job in the park. Best job in the world.”

For details of the Red Bus Tours in Glacier National Park, click here.

The Other Cheap-Arse Way to Melbourne Airport - by Tram!

In my popular post To Melbourne Airport the Cheap-Arse Way, I describe how to travel to/from the city centre and the airport by regular public transport, aboard a train and the route 901 bus.

It's the most frequent option. However, there is a second, more obscure, way of travelling between MEL and the city: using Melbourne's favourite mode of transport, the tram.

Here's how to do it...

To Melbourne Airport

From Elizabeth Street in Melbourne's central business district, catch a route 59 tram all the way to its northern terminus at Stop 59 in the suburb of Airport West (timetable here).

You may have noticed two interesting things already. Firstly, it's a curious coincidence that route 59 happens to have 59 stops (pure chance, as it happens).

Also, that Airport West is an odd name for a suburb that's south of the airport. That's true, but it was actually named after Melbourne's original air terminal, Essendon Airport to the east, which is still in operation and which you'll pass on the tram.

When you step out of the route 59 terminus, ignore the bus stop that's immediately adjacent - that's for buses heading to the nearby shopping centre. Instead, you have to do a slightly fiddly crossing of the road intersection to reach the bus stop to the north of the terminus on the other side of the road (near the Red Rooster outlet).

Are you there? Good. Now you simply have to wait for a bus. From here, you can catch any of three bus routes to the airport:

• Bus 478 to Melbourne Airport (timetable here)
• Bus 479 to Sunbury Station via Melbourne Airport (timetable here)
• Bus 482 to Melbourne Airport (timetable here)

These buses are not that frequent. Between them, the 478 and 479 buses run every half-hour from 5.45am to 7.15pm on weekdays (and hourly between 7.45am and 6.45pm at weekends), taking 15 minutes to reach the airport.

The 482 runs only eight times a day on weekdays and follows a curiously circuitous route through the industrial hinterland leading to the airport, thus taking 25 minutes. As the 482 bus is so less frequent and takes a bit longer, I'd only recommend it if it happens to show up and the next 478 or 479 bus is more than ten minutes away.

The bus terminates at the public transport interchange on Grants Road, next to Terminal 4 at Melbourne Airport. It's a convenient stop for flights aboard Jetstar and Tigerair, the budget airlines serving that terminal.

For international flights and Virgin Australia domestic flights respectively, Terminals 2 and 3 are about a 10 minute walk away. For Qantas domestic flights, Terminal 1 is a 15 minute hike.

From Melbourne Airport

You need a Myki card to travel on Melbourne's public transport, and to get hold of one of these at the airport you have three choices.

1. The easiest option is to buy a card directly from a bus driver, who can also add credit to the card. The card costs $6 to purchase, and on top of that a two-hour fare from the airport to the city centre (and onwards to anywhere in Melbourne within the time limit) is $4.40.

All buses should be equipped for this transaction, but if you strike a bus where the driver has run out of cards or the equipment isn't working, there are two other options.

2. You can buy a Myki card from one of the three Myki ticket machines located at the airport. These are located in the arrivals areas of Terminals 2, 3 and 4.

Again, the card itself costs $6 and you top it up with credit; you'll need at least $4.40 credit to reach the city centre and stay in the black.

3. You can also buy a Myki Explorer Pack from the Skybus ticket booths at the airport (Skybus is the premium departs-every-ten-minutes airport bus which heads to the city centre for $19.75).

The $15 purchase price includes the standard $6 purchase price for the card, plus $9 of travel credit on standard public transport (ie not aboard Skybus itself). That's more than enough to get to the city centre on the regular bus and tram, then travel onwards to anywhere in the Melbourne metropolitan area.

The visitor pack also includes discount vouchers to major Melbourne attractions and a decorative Myki card wallet, so that may add to the incentive to pick one up.

The standard bus stop is within the public transport interchange on Grants Road, near Terminal 4 (so allow 15 minutes walk from Terminal 1, and 10 minutes walk from Terminals 2 and 3). Look for the orange-and-white PTV sign inside the interchange.

Here you board any of these bus routes, all of which head to Airport West Shopping Centre:

• Bus 478 (timetable here)
• Bus 479 (timetable here)
• Bus 482 (timetable here)

"Touch on" the card (as the jargon goes) against a Myki reader on board, and take a seat.

Between them, the 478 and 479 buses run every half-hour from about 6.30am to 8pm on weekdays (and hourly between 8am and 7pm at weekends). It takes 15 minutes to reach the terminus of the 59 tram, which is next to the Dromana Ave/Matthews Ave bus stop.

Note that this is the second-last bus stop on the route; if you doze off you'll end up at the Airport West Shopping Centre, one stop further on (don't worry if this happens, it's a short walk back).

Touch off your Myki card as you leave the bus, then step onto the platform at the tram terminus right next to the bus stop - you'll recognise it by its distinctive green signage.

Trams run later and more frequently than the buses, so sit back and wait for a number 59 tram to Flinders Street Station in the city centre (timetable here).

Touch on your card again when you board the tram, and relax - you'll be in Melbourne's central business district in about 50 minutes, with plenty of interesting suburbia to view on the way (if you're a Dame Edna Everage fan, give her a wave as you pass through Moonee Ponds).

Fares

The Myki fare between the airport and city centre in either direction is a mere $4.40. This sum is automatically subtracted from the card balance when you touch off along the route.

This fare covers both of Melbourne's fare zones, so includes all public transport for the duration of the two hours. Hence you could transfer to another tram, a bus or a train when you reach the city centre, to travel onward within the same fare.

Give me credit

The catch is that you must buy a Myki card for that non-refundable $6 purchase price; though of course you'll be able to keep using it during your stay in Melbourne, and retain it for use on any future visits.

To top up the card's credit, the easiest method is to step into any of the numerous 7-Eleven outlets in the city centre and ask the person behind the counter to do it (it can also be topped up at train stations and at Myki machines at larger tram stops).

To work out how much credit you need during your visit, budget $8.80 per weekday (the capped daily fare) and $6.40 per weekend day or public holiday. If you like, the 7-Eleven staffer can alternatively add a pass to the card covering all travel over seven days for $44.

So very Melbourne

The best thing about the bus+tram option, is that it gets you straight into the "being in Melbourne" vibe – the city has the world's largest tram network, and the tram is one of its most beloved icons. There's no more civilised way of travelling in the city, if you ask me.

Note that the bus+tram option isn't really suitable for people with large amounts of luggage; but if travelling with reasonably small and portable gear, go for it.

So happy flying - and enjoy the cheap ride by tram to/from Melbourne Airport.

To Melbourne Airport the Cheap-Arse Way (2019 Update)

It's been three years since I last updated this blog's most popular post, revealing how to get between the city centre and Melbourne Airport very cheaply on regular public transport. There have been a few changes since then, so read on...

The cost of getting to and from airports throughout the Western world can be outrageously expensive, and Melbourne is not immune from this curse.

However... there is a way of getting to and from Melbourne Airport cheaply.

So draw your chairs closer, lean in and discover how to save a tidy bit of cash.

For the cheap-arses among us, there is a much cheaper way into the city centre than the 30 to 45 minute $19.75 Skybus journey, though of course it takes longer (about 60 to 70 minutes, depending on connections).

This is how it works...

To Melbourne Airport

From any station in Melbourne's central business district, catch a train along the Craigieburn line and alight at Broadmeadows Station (timetable here).

Step straight out through the station to the bus bay which is just to the right as you clear the main entrance. Here you catch the 901 bus to Melbourne Airport, which leaves approximately every 15 minutes from about 5am to midnight (timetable here).

Note: on Saturdays and Sundays the 901 bus departure intervals are every 30 minutes; and on Sundays the 901 operates from Broadmeadows from about 7am to 9.30pm.

It's important to note that 901 buses going the other direction to Frankston use the same stop, so make sure the bus destination sign says 'Melbourne Airport'.

The bus terminates at the public transport interchange on Grants Road, next to Terminal 4 at Melbourne Airport. It's a very convenient stop for flights aboard Jetstar and Tigerair, the budget airlines serving Terminal 4.

For international flights and Virgin Australia domestic flights respectively, Terminals 2 and 3 are about a 10 minute walk away. For Qantas domestic flights, Terminal 1 is a 15 minute hike. Although there's shelter at most points of the walk, you might need an umbrella if caught in the rain as you go.

Why it isn't possible to have more than one bus stop in operation at the airport is one of the great mysteries of the universe, but that's a puzzle for another day.

From Melbourne Airport

You need a Myki card to travel on Melbourne's public transport, and to get hold of one of these at the airport you have three choices.

1. The easiest option is to buy a card directly from the 901 bus driver, who can also add credit to the card. The card costs $6 to purchase, and on top of that a two-hour fare from the airport to the city centre (and onwards to anywhere in Melbourne within the time limit) is $4.40.

All buses should be equipped for this transaction, but if you strike a bus where the driver has run out of cards or the equipment isn't working, there are two other options.

2. You can instead buy a Myki Explorer Pack from the Skybus ticket booths at the airport. Skybus is the premium departs-every-ten-minutes airport bus which heads to the city centre for $19.75, so this approach may seem unintuitive.

However, you can get the pack from Skybus. The $15 purchase price includes the standard $6 purchase price for the card, plus $9 of travel credit on standard public transport (ie not Skybus itself). That's more than enough to get to the city centre on a regular bus, then travel onwards to anywhere in the Melbourne metropolitan area.

The visitor pack also includes discount vouchers to major Melbourne attractions and a decorative Myki card wallet, so that may add to the incentive to pick one up.

3. The third option is to buy a Myki card from one of the three Myki ticket machines located at the airport. These are located in the arrivals areas of Terminals 2, 3 and 4.

Again, the card itself costs $6 and you top it up with credit; you'll need at least $4.40 credit to reach the city centre and stay in the black.

The regular bus stop is within the public transport interchange on Grants Road, near Terminal 4 (so allow 15 minutes walk from Terminal 1, and 10 minutes walk from Terminals 2 and 3). Look for the orange-and-white PTV sign inside the interchange.

Here you board the 901 bus to Frankston, which leaves approximately every 15 minutes from about 5am to midnight (timetable here).

Note: on Saturdays and Sundays the 901 bus departure intervals are every 30 minutes; and on Sundays the 901 operates from the airport from about 6.30am to 9pm.

"Touch on" the card (as the jargon goes) against a Myki reader on board, and take a seat.

When the bus reaches Broadmeadows Station, touch off the card, get out and walk into the station, touching on the card again. Take the underpass to Platform 1. From here a train will take you straight to the city centre (timetable here).

Fares

The Myki fare between the airport and city centre in either direction is a mere $4.40. This sum is automatically subtracted from the card balance when you touch off along the route.

This fare covers both of Melbourne's fare zones, so includes all public transport for the duration of the two hours. Hence you could transfer to another train, a bus or a tram when you reach the city centre, to travel onward within the same fare.

Give me credit

The catch is that you must buy a Myki card for that non-refundable $6 purchase price; though of course you'll be able to keep using it during your stay in Melbourne, and retain it for use on any future visits.

To top up the card's credit, the easiest method is to step into any of the numerous 7-Eleven outlets in the city centre and ask the person behind the counter to do it (it can also be topped up at train stations and at Myki machines at larger tram stops).

To work out how much credit you need during your visit, budget $8.80 per weekday (the capped daily fare) and $6.40 per weekend day or public holiday. If you like, the 7-Eleven staffer can alternatively add a pass to the card covering all travel over seven days for $44.

Going a-Broady

Another good thing about the 901+train option, is that it gets you straight into the "being in Melbourne" vibe – you can eavesdrop on some entertaining conversations on the train to/from Broady, which has a reputation for being one of Melbourne's tougher suburbs.

Don't let that put you off catching the train to/from Broadmeadows though, as it's a staffed station. Do exercise reasonable vigilance however, especially if travelling after dark.

Another catch is that the train+bus option isn't really suitable for people with large amounts of luggage; but if travelling with reasonably small and portable gear, go for it.

So happy flying - and enjoy the cheap ride to/from Melbourne Airport.

Montreal, Canada: What Lies Beneath

This article from my first visit to Canada appeared in The Sunday Age newspaper in 2011, but never went online: so here it is. I was hosted on that trip by the Canadian Tourism Commission.

When the architects of Montreal’s underground shopping mall beneath Place Ville-Marie drew up their plans in 1962, they had little idea what they’d started.

As newer malls and office buildings were constructed, they were all linked together. Thus the Underground City was born.

RÉSO, a play on the French word for network, “réseau”, is now the largest underground complex in the world, stretching some 33 kilometres and linking malls, museums, train stations, government buildings and hotels.

All can be reached without ever setting foot in the outside world; a compelling alternative in winter, when temperatures can plunge to minus 15 degrees.

I’m usually allergic to shopping malls, but RÉSO intrigues me and I decide to walk its entire main loop (with a Metro trip in the middle)...

10am. I pause to look up at the statue of a young Queen Victoria in the centre of Square-Victoria, then spot the RÉSO entry sign and head down the rabbit hole. Below ground, I enter a long, strangely curved brick-lined tunnel, its curves accented by wavy tracks of lights in the ceiling.

10.25am. Nearing Place Bonaventure, I’m surprised to realise I’m back at street level, as I can see manicured lawns out of the occasional window. Soon after I descend into the ominous-sounding Le Passage. It’s pure 1970s down here, with exposed concrete walls and stained timber handrails.

10.50am. After twists and turns, I emerge into the lofty hall of the Gare Centrale, Montreal’s main train station. Above me there’s a magnificent bas-relief frieze depicting stylised figures engaged in everyday activities with a 20th century gender bias - men working in construction or playing lacrosse, women teaching or planting trees.

11.15am. I’m heading into prime retail territory now, up pebble-dash steps into a sunlit atrium with a low glass ceiling. There’s a cafe beneath the glass, dotted with low black couches on which shoppers lounge. It’s surrounded by shops, and I realise this is Place Ville-Marie, the mall that started it all.

11.25am. A few more turnings and I’m beneath Rue Ste-Catherine, Montreal’s major shopping strip. Above me towers the upmarket Centre Eaton, the largest shopping mall in the city, with 175 stores over four levels surmounted by a vast glass roof.

11.35am. I catch a train from McGill Metro station to Place-des-Arts. At the end of the Place-des-Arts station concourse is a huge and beautiful backlit artwork depicting Montreal’s musical history across multiple glass panels.

12 noon. Entering the Musée d’Art Contemporain from beneath, I encounter a huge wall projection called Le Tournis, in which a camera spins dizzyingly around the centre of a room while glass smashes loudly between the foreground and the far wall. Oddly, its unrefined chaos makes a refreshing counterpoint to the controlled nature of the Underground City.

12.30pm. After the art, it’s startling to return to RÉSO and enter the Complexe Desjardins’ vast terraced shopping mall. At ground level there’s a fountain with a 30 metre high jet that almost grazes the lofty skylight. I wonder whether the settings have ever slipped, resulting in a soggy ceiling.

1pm. Back above ground at Square-Victoria, I discover the morning’s clouds have departed and it’s turned into a perfect day - bright, sunny and warm. The perfect day, ironically, to be outdoors.

Hadrian's Wall by Bus

On this trip I was hosted by Visit Britain.

Last year Narrelle Harris and I visited Hadrian's Wall, constructed in AD 122 by the Roman Empire in order to mark and guard its northernmost border.

You can hike the entire length of the wall, but that's a long way to walk - the trail runs 135 kilometres from eastern Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway in the west. And the best section is in the middle, where the hilly country with its lower population has left much of the structure intact.

The solution for us was to catch the seasonal AD122 bus. The bus runs between the railway stations of Haltwhistle (in the west) and Hexham (in the east), with easy connections to Carlisle and Newcastle.

As it stops at key sites along the wall, including museums and former forts, it makes the historic structure accessible to everyone, though there's still some walking to do from the bus stops to the wall itself.

Not everyone's up for a long walk, especially in such hilly country, so it's a good option for travellers who are less mobile.

In the end we did walk a section of the wall, taking a leisurely two hours to stroll up and down the sloping trail west from the fort site now known as Housesteads.

Once we'd had enough of that, we used a farm access road to get back to the main road, where we were happy to flag down the next bus. A day ticket allows multiple rides, and the bus will pick up anywhere that's safe along its route.

The walk was great, but we were happy to get back on the bus and use it to reach the ruins of the former Roman military town south of the wall, Vindolanda [pictured above].

We used it the next day as well, to see some of the wall-related sites closer to Haltwhistle. It was a great way to explore Hadrian's Wall, and allow some walking without exhausting ourselves.

For more details about the AD122 bus, click here.

One Trip, Multiple Stories: A Travel Writer's Rail Journey in West Coast USA

For the journey detailed below, I paid for my airfares and received on-the-ground assistance from local tourism authorities and hotels. Full disclosures are included with each linked article and blog post.

This is, remarkably, my 500th post at Aerohaveno. I started the blog way back in 2008, during the golden age of blogs, when social media outlets such as Facebook were new and yet to be adopted by the masses.

In that era, a blog was the prime means for an individual to put their views online, whether on a topic of expertise or simply as personal reflection.

Now we have the noise and colour of social media, and perhaps wonder if things are better.

In any case, for post number 500 I'd like to repeat what I did for post 400 - draw back the curtain on how travel writing works, at least for a freelancer like me.

In post 400 I looked at a trip I undertook around the world. This time I'll focus on the west coast of the USA.

In October 2015 I flew into Los Angeles, then caught Amtrak trains up the west coast with visits to San Francisco, Portland and Seattle along the way.

I've chosen this 2015 trip because the period elapsed since then has been long enough for almost everything I wrote about it to be published.

Below I'll outline how each activity led to a specific piece of writing - with a link to the published article or blog post.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.

Monday 12 October 2015

Activity: Fly Qantas from Melbourne to Los Angeles.

1. Resulting story: A review of Qantas' Premium Economy class for Fairfax Media's Traveller website in Australia.
2. Blog Post: Catching public transport from LAX to Downtown LA.

Activity: Check out the renovated and reopened Clifton's Cafeteria in LA's Downtown.

1. Resulting story: A short item about Clifton's in a round-up of 2015 travel finds for Fairfax Media's Traveller website and print section in Australia. 
2. Second resulting story: An article about Downtown LA highlights for roundtheworldflights.com [story not currently online].

Tuesday 13 October to Wednesday 14 October 2015

Activity: Take the guided studio tours at Warner Brothers, Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures.
Resulting story: An article about LA movie studio tours for Lonely Planet's website.

Wednesday 14 October 2015

Activity: Visit new Australian-owned café, Paramount Coffee Project.
Resulting story: An article about Aussie-owned food and coffee outlets in LA, for Fairfax Media's Good Food website in Australia.

Thursday 15 October 2015

Activity: Explore new contemporary art gallery, The Broad, in LA's Bunker Hill.

1. Resulting story: A short item about The Broad in a round-up of 2015 travel finds for Fairfax Media's Traveller website and print section in Australia.
2. Blog Post: My visit to The Broad.

Activity: Visit the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City.

1. Resulting story: An article listing six quirky attractions of LA, including the Museum of Jurassic Technology, for Lonely Planet's website.
2. Second resulting story: Commissioned for an Australian media outlet, but yet to be published.

Friday 16 October 2015

Activity: Catch the Coast Starlight sleeper train north from LA to Oakland (for San Francisco); then later onward to Portland and Seattle.

1. Resulting story: An article about the entire rail trip for the magazine Get Up & Go in Australia.
2. Second resulting story: An article about the sleeper train experience for Fairfax Media's Traveller website and print section in Australia.

Saturday 17 October 2015

Activity: Join the eccentric Emperor Norton's Fantastic San Francisco Time Machine tour.
Resulting story: An article about the tour's highlights for Fairfax Media's Traveller website in Australia.

Sunday 18 October 2015

Blog Post: Review of the long-running musical revue Beach Blanket Babylon.

Monday 19 October 2015

Activity: Attend the North Beach Underground tour of San Francisco, focusing on the Beat Generation.

1. Resulting story: A 'Postcard from San Francisco' article for the Spectrum (culture) section of The Age newspaper in Melbourne.
2. Blog Post: Profile of six memorable tours of San Francisco.

Blog Post: San Francisco's retro public transport.

Thursday 22 October to Sunday 25 October 2015

 
Activity: Visit Voodoo Doughnuts, Stark's Vacuum Cleaner Museum, Powell's City of Books and other offbeat attractions in Portland, Oregon.
Resulting story: A list of 'Ten attractions keeping Portland weird' for Fairfax Media's Traveller website in Australia.

Blog Post: Memorable street art of Portland.

Saturday 24 October 2015

 
Activity: Join a food walking tour of North Mississippi Avenue, Portland.
Resulting story: An article about highlights of the tour, for Fairfax Media's Good Food website in Australia.

Blog Post: A visit to Stark's Vacuum Cleaner Museum, Portland.

Sunday 25 October 2015

Blog Post: A tour of Portland's coffee culture.

Monday 26 October 2015

 
Activity: Take a coffee walking tour of Seattle, Washington.
Resulting story: An article about the city's coffee highlights for Fairfax Media's Traveller website in Australia.

Wednesday 28 October 2015

Blog Post: Visiting Seattle's Living Computer Museum.

Thursday 29 October 2015

 
Activity: Travel to Snoqualmie and North Bend, to visit locations from the TV series Twin Peaks.

1. Resulting story: A 'Postcard from Twin Peaks' article for the Spectrum (culture) section of The Age newspaper in Melbourne.
2. Second resulting story: An article about Twin Peaks locations for Lonely Planet's website.
3. Blog Post: My visit to Twin Peaks locations.

Sunday 1 November 2015

Blog Post: Taking a tour of Underground Seattle.

Monday 2 November 2015

Activity: Fly from Seattle to Los Angeles via Alaska Airlines.
Resulting story: A review of Alaska Airlines' domestic Economy class for Fairfax Media's Traveller website in Australia.

Activity: Fly Qantas from Los Angeles to Melbourne.

1. Resulting story: A review of facilities at LAX for roundtheworldflights.com [story not currently online]. 
2. Blog Post: Review of the new Qantas International Business Lounge.

And that's that! I arrived back home on Wednesday 4 November, courtesy of the International Dateline.

Writing output, financial income

By my count, the trip produced a total of 18 paid articles for outside publications (with a 19th yet to be published and paid for), and 12 posts on this blog.

I calculate the paid articles earned a total of $8850.72 (all figures here are in Australian dollars) for both words and photos, before adding any applicable sales tax.

About another $500 should come in from the final article. And there was additional research undertaken on the trip which I may yet write about, as well as revisiting its attractions in new ways.

The blog posts don't earn any direct income, but drive traffic to Aerohaveno and thus contribute to the occasional small payments I receive from the Google Ads running on my blog.

Expenses

I had significant expenses on this journey, especially since I was paying my own airfares on this occasion.

Including airfares, I estimate my total expenses on this trip at $3028.26, which leaves a profit of $5822.46 (plus $500 from the unpublished article, and possible income from future stories derived from the same research material).

Some trips have a greater return on outlay, others less so. Quite aside from the profit, however, this west coast USA trek turned out to be one of my favourite journeys ever, and I was very glad I'd taken it.

It's not easy to make a living from travel writing; but if you can derive a published story per day from a particular trip, you're off to a decent start.

After this epic post, it's time for a break! Aerohaveno will be taking a break over the holiday season, and will be back with you in early January. Have a great New Year!

2017: My Year in Travel

I was hosted on the trips mentioned below by the relevant local tourism authorities.

Everyone else in the media publishes 'year in review' round-ups at this time of the year, so I'm jumping on the bandwagon. Here are personal highlights from my travels over the past twelve months...

1. Admiring the Asian-European 'fusion architecture' of Macau.

I didn't know much about this former Portuguese territory before visiting it in February, but I quickly learned its European connection had lasted much longer than that of Hong Kong. The Portuguese were in Macau for over four centuries, from 1557 to 1999; by comparison, Hong Kong was under British rule for just over 150 years.

As a result, there's quite a mix of Asian and European influences in Macau's architecture, with striking contrasts. The best example I saw was a former covered marketplace in Taipa Village (pictured above), which has Greek pillars and a Chinese roof.

For more, read my blog post about about my favourite place in Macau.

2. Riding the narrow trams of Hong Kong.

I enjoyed lots about Hong Kong on my first visit there - the food, its cultural attractions, the busy urban streets. One thing that stood out was the city's tram system, which runs along the north side of Hong Kong Island.

I love trams, and these ones are particularly atmospheric. In addition to being double-decker, they're rather narrow, lending them a charmingly improbable fairytale look. It can be hard to get a seat on them sometimes, but they're hands-down more fun than catching the MTR underground railway.

3. Visiting Ballarat on a White Night.

Having missed Melbourne's annual White Night arts event while I was in Hong Kong, I took the chance to attend the first regional staging of it in Ballarat. It was loads of fun, being out until 4am on busy streets full of happy locals ogling illuminations which drew on the city's rich gold rush and Aboriginal history.

I wrote about the experience here.

4. Discovering First Nations culture in Vancouver.

I was impressed by Vancouver's Museum of Anthropology when I visited the Canadian city in July. It houses a wonderful collection of Indigenous art from the past two centuries, with an impressive new gallery in which modern-day First Nations artists comment on the cultural underpinnings of the art of their forebears.

Read my post about the museum here.

5. Cruising the Alaska Marine Highway.

Not all Alaskan cruises are on huge luxury cruise ships. Embarking at Prince Rupert, Canada, I took the MV Matanuska to the Alaskan state capital Juneau, then on to former gold rush town Skagway.

These car ferries (with cabins) are used by locals as much as visitors, providing a great way to see the beautiful scenery on the Inside Passage while not being tied to a cruise itinerary.

I wrote about cruising the Alaska Marine Highway in this article for Lonely Planet.

6. Taking the train to Yukon.

There had to be a train in this list, right? You know how much I like rail travel. And a ride along the White Pass & Yukon Route railway is spectacular, with the narrow-gauge train chugging up from the Alaskan coast at Skagway through the mountains across the Canadian border to Carcross, Yukon. It's a brilliant journey, with magnificent scenery.

7. Meeting a crocodile on the Sunshine Coast.

While attending the annual Australian Society of Travel Writers conference in Queensland in August, I was able to explore the late Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo.

It's a lovely place to visit, with plenty of interesting animals, but the highlight for me was the arena show in which a couple of staff members (and a foolhardy white bird) hung around very close to a big saltwater crocodile - see my video clip above.

You can read more about my Australia Zoo visit here.

8. Walking Hadrian's Wall in the UK.

I like a bit of walking, but I'm not one for multi-day treks. So when I learned about the hop-on, hop-off bus which serves key points along what was once the Roman Empire's border wall, I realised it'd be possible to do a shorter hike between bus stops.

So Narrelle and I spend over two hours strolling west of the former Roman fort at Housesteads - then transferred to the bus and headed off for lunch.

Walking the undulating trail next to Hadrian's Wall was harder than I'd expected, but I'm glad we did it. Not only was it good to get out of my urban comfort zone, I felt I'd become closer to the inhabitants of the Roman era, otherwise so distant in time.

I wrote about our Hadrian's Wall visit for the Globe & Mail newspaper in Canada; read it here.

So... how was your year in travel?