After an unexpected week-long delay because I am a moron who can't read trackwork notices properly, I finally finished my Victorian extreme commuting experiment with a trip to Traralgon. How could you not love a route with stations called Bunyip, Moe and Nar Nar Goon?
I'm a planner. I plan stuff in ridiculous detail. And yet despite having mapped out every element of my trips for this week's Victorian extreme commuting experiment, I foolishly forgot to fully check one of the most obvious factors: trackwork.
Day 3 of my Victorian extreme commuting experiment sees me venturing to the Ballarat suburb of Wendouree, some 120 kilometres from Melbourne itself. This seems like a good time to reflect on the relative cost of tickets in Melbourne and Sydney.
If it's mildly stupid to test the longest train commuter journeys in Victoria, as I'm doing this week, then it's definitely questionable to do that twice in one day, including the most time-consuming trip you can possibly take. But that's what I did over the past 24 hours.
Back in January I carried out an extreme commuting experiment where I travelled to the furthest reaches of the Sydney commuter train network to see how feasible/exhausting/attractive those journeys were. This week I'm armed with a Myki card and repeating the experiment in Victoria -- but with a few new twists.
