I’ve been reading a lot of Carlo Rovelli lately. He’s an Italian theoretical physicist who writes elegantly and clearly about relativity, quantum mechanics, and the like. One of his main points is that time is not only relative but in some cases it doesn’t even exist. Perfect reading matter, in short, for a trip that took 28 hours end-to-end (DC to Melbourne) and skipped straight from Friday to Sunday. I’m pretty sure time even stood still for a while at LAX, where I made my connection. (I’d have known it was LAX even if you just plunked me down on the concourse – there were aging men with thinning hair tied into a ponytail everywhere you looked, often accompanied by much younger women.)
Why go through such an ordeal? I’ve wanted to come to this part of the world for ages. Australia is my seventh continent, home to a vital literary and music scene (including one of my favorite bands, The Cat Empire), a fascinating prehistory – modern humans settled here long before they reached much of Europe – and countless natural wonders. (Many Australian features are called “Great”: the Great Barrier Reef, the Great Dividing Range, the Great Sandy Desert, the Great Victoria Desert, etc.) Likewise, after hearing my mother say that New Zealand was the most beautiful place she’d ever been – she and my father traveled all over the world – I knew I had to see it for myself.
This is my second trip with Tauck, following last summer’s river cruise from Bucharest to Budapest. This tour will hit many highlights of both nations, starting in Melbourne and continuing to Uluru (Ayers Rock), the Great Barrier Reef, Sydney, and both islands of New Zealand. I look forward to sharing my experiences with you!
Practical matters: the Melbourne Airport and Travel Tips
Melbourne’s airport is around 20 minutes from the city center. Going through passport control is pretty painless. Scan your passport at an automatic kiosk, answer a few yes/no questions, and the machine spits out a receipt with your picture. After collecting your bags, you bring the receipt and a traveler information card (handed out on the plane) to a border control agent. There were lines at the machines and at border control, but they moved quickly. Of course, if you want a passport stamp, you need to bypass the machines and go to an immigration station. It looked like that line also moved well. Baggage claim, alas, wasn’t so efficient – bags didn’t start appearing till around 45 minutes after we landed.
There’s not much you need to know in advance of visiting. Both Australia and New Zealand require an ETA (Electronic Travel Authority), which you can obtain online in just a few minutes (Australia’s process is a bit more user-friendly than New Zealand’s). You have to obtain the ETA between 45 days and 1 year in advance of your trip.
Upon arriving in Australia no one asked to see my ETA, but I’m guessing that (1) when using the electronic passport kiosk, the system checks that there is a record of the ETA, and (2) if you go to the immigration station instead of the kiosks, they’d ask for it there. I’ll let you know how New Zealand handles things in a later post.
The only other tip I’d give is don’t (tip that is, at least not very much). Workers in restaurants are fairly compensated. A fellow crossword constructor, whom I met for lunch on my first day here, said restaurant workers make $25-30 Australian dollars per hour (about 16-20 US dollars). Tips are neither expected nor encouraged. (The same holds true for taxis.)
My next post will cover the three days I spent in Melbourne – stay tuned!
PuffinlessTravel 