The Wanderings of busman7

Been a while since my last entry but a combination of insane internet rates + not much new to add has kept me quiet.

The overnight trip on the “Hound” down to Sydney was uneventful, turned out that the set down (drop off) was at the train station so only a matter of taking the escalator up to the platform & check in for the afternoon train back to Adelaide. Even Sydney tends to shut down travel agents on weekends so couldn’t accomplish a few trip details that I had planned during the layover, other than that the city was full of people in a big rush to go nowhere, not hard to see why even most Aussies don’t like the place.

The IP to Adelaide & The Overland to Melbourne were up to the usual Great Southern Rail standards & good trips.

Due to the lack of any inkling of how to civilly treat customers by Qantas airline personal my time in Melbourne was spent dealing with the incompetent morons they employ finding a flight out of the country. Even though I held an open RTW ticket from One World for a flight SYD – HNL Qantas refused to find me a seat until over a month later. Ended up changing my itinerary at a cost of over $1,000.00 just to get to hell out of the country, to which I shall never return & add Qantas to Air Canada on my never again fly again list.

Due to the BS with Qantas I didn’t have time to explore Melbourne which seemed to be an interesting city.

Did it again, by believing the weather man (no more reliable here than Canada) cut my trip to Tasmania, which turned out to be the best part of Australia, short & only got a small taste of that interesting island.

All in all the Australian experience was interesting & glad I did it as now it’s mystic is gone & now I can see it for what it is without wondering if I had missed something. Basically one can see everything, be ripped off at tourist traps & abused by large corporations,in North America, that Australia has to offer without the expense of traveling 1/2 way around the world.

Shall post the average daily costs in a bit but they are too scary to add up now, really bad when a decent hotel room is cheaper than a private in a hostel!!

So as it’s a cold, windy day with a bit of drizzle here in Christchurch I decided to stay in, catch up on my paper work & do laundry. My costs in Australia for the 33 days I was there come to a total of $7,000.00 AUD. Could be off a couple hundred either way as didn’t keep track to the penny.

Food averaged $30/day & accommodation for 21 nights averaged $70with the majority being in hostel dorms, the other 12 nights were spent in bus, train or ferry seats. Train sleepers at the ripoff price of $300/nite were out of the question. Other expenses were train pass $590, bus pass $709, ferry Tasmania $151, various tours $775, taxi’s $139, internet approx $100, laundry $30, extra-plane fare extorted by Qantas to get out of OZ $1034 + an exorbitant phone bill at the Mercure hotel in Melbourne to American & Qantas airlines of $67.70. The cost of flights to OZ on the RTW are over & above this amount.

All in all a total of $212.12 per day, compared to my daily cost of $48.00 in Central America (Spanish lessons included) it has to be one of the worst deals I have been caught up in in a long time. Didn’t spend much more than that my entire 6 months in SE Asia (including my TEFL course) so NO way can I justify that cost for the experience or recommend a visit there to anyone!!

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 12th, 2010 at 14:14 and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.