Still wouldn’t have added up as she was known by the community to be an experienced mushroom collector. Death caps don’t look like any edible Australian mushroom, and they only grow in symbiosis with oak trees. They’re very easy to avoid.

Almost all the accidental death cap poisonings that occur in Australia involve people who’ve arrived from China relatively recently. Death caps can look very similar to edible Chinese straw mushrooms. This is why it’s important to learn the local flora/fauna, as it may be different to what you grew up with.

It’s been nearly 7 years since I was in Melbourne, so this might no longer work - but an un-advertised hack then was: The ticket is valid for two hours starting from the next hour. So, if you buy a ticket at x:59, your ticket is valid for 2 hours, 1 minute. If you buy it at x:01, you get 2 hours, 59 minutes. That’s why I said 2-3 hours.

That was a holdover from the previous paper ticketing system (MetCard) – it would always give you an expiry time on the hour, so a nominal two-hour ticket would last at least two hours. Myki behaved the same way at first, but they changed it a couple of years ago to always give you exactly two hours, so you can’t use that trick any more.

That’s why I said 2-3 hours. When I was there, they’d priced a 2-zone return journey as being slightly cheaper than a daily fare. The daily cap didn’t exist, yet though - these days, it’d likely be $10 for the day either way.

The discounted return trip for a two-zone journey only applied if it was after 9AM. That was another holdover from the paper MetCard system. I believe it was phased out at some point, perhaps when they reduced the price of longer journeys.

The price for a day being the same as two 2-hour trips when you had a multi-trip ticket already existed with the paper MetCard system. There were three multi-trip tickets that were sold for the same price:

• 10×2 hour
• 5×Daily
• Weekly

The weekly ticket was pretty simple to understand. It was valid for seven logical days, starting on the day that you first validated it (a logical day ended at about 2AM, not midnight – the few services after midnight before transport stopped for the night counted as the previous day). The 5×Daily was pretty simple as well – you could use it all day on five logical days, but they didn’t need to be contiguous. If you travelled most days, including at least one day on the weekend, a weekly would be cheaper. But if you travelled no more than five days per week and sometimes travelled four days or less, the 5×Daily was cheaper, because you could carry over your unused days to the next week.

The 10×2 hour was more complicated. The first time you used it in a logical day, you’d use up one “ride” which would last no less than two hours (i.e. up to 2:59 if you validated right after the hour). The second time you used it in the same logical day, it would use up one more ride which would last until the end of the logical day. So you’d never use more than two of your “rides” in a single logical day, no matter how much you travelled. This meant that there was really no reason to buy a 5×Daily ticket – the 10×2 hour ticket got you the same number of logical days of travel for the same price, with some added flexibility if you occasionally only used a couple of hours worth of public transport.

They never advertised that the 10×2 hour ticket had this feature of upgrading you to daily on your second ride. I think it didn’t have that feature originally, but they rolled it out with no announcement and kept it until the paper ticketing system was retired.

I was actually a beta tester of the system, and still have the very faded “control group” sticker on my card. I sometimes wonder how many of the control group tickets are still in play.

Interesting that it still works after that long. Myki cards expire after a few years (originally three years, but I think they’ve introduced ways to it to at least five years if you continue to use the card). When introduced, Opal cards expired after nine years (I don’t know if they’ve changed this). Hong Kong Octopus cards also expire after a few years. In all three of those systems, you can get the value transferred to another card if your card has expired or will expire soon.

Not really. You probably caught something into town in the morning, and that ticket would be expired. They only last 2-3 hours. So, you caught a train in the morning, you buy another one to go home. At lunch, your tram trip across to your lunch spot is free.

Not how Melbourne works. As soon as you go over two hours, it bumps you to the all- day fare. So you went into the city, over two hours later you used a tram in the CBD and you’re bumped up to the daily fare, you went home more than two hours later and you wouldn’t get charged again. The free tram zone makes no difference because you’re paying the daily fare whether the trip in the middle is nominally “free” or not.

Whoever told you this was wrong. You can get one at just about any newsagent, as well as a few Transperth locations in major train and bus stations. I don’t know whether you can get one at the airport, but i hope you can.

It wasn’t possible to buy them like that last time I visited (which, as I said, it’s years ago now). You needed to order one with a Perth residential address. I guess it must have been during the initial rollout that they were limiting it. It’s good they’ve fixed that.

Speaking of smart cards for visitors, it’s a lot easier to cash out unused Myki than Opal, which is a win for Melbourne. Hong Kong Octopus is easy to cash out, too. Sydney makes it unreasonably hard.

This is still unreliable. Train ticket machines should be able to handle your phone, but busses don’t. Busses barely support cash (they only have a few dollars change).

Oh, you could use cards at ticket machines in Perth when I was there, as you can in Melbourne. But in Sydney you don’t need to do that. In Sydney (like London), you can just tap on/off with a regular credit card and it behaves like a full fare Opal (or Oyster in London). You only need an Opal card if:

• You want child/concession pricing
• You have more people than logical cards (e.g. if you and your partner have Visa/MC tied to the same account with the same card number)
• You want anonymity (in which case you need to rotate multiple cards, missing out on fare caps, and never top up with a credit card)

Buses in Sydney don’t take cash any more, which can be a bit of a pain. You need to top up before catching a bus.

Still, a daily ticket is $17.80 - which is crazy expensive. And that wouldn’t cover the airport. That’s another ~$17 on top of that.

In practice you rarely hit the daily cap. You can travel from the eastern suburbs to the west for less than the Myki $5 minimum. For example Kings Cross to Cabramatta is $4. Most trips that most people make are just home to some destination (work, shops, school, friend’s house or whatever) and back. For that, you end up getting a discounted return price and paying less than the $10 Myki daily price. If you’re doing it every day, you hit the weekly cap and it’s cheaper again.

You keep talking about the maximum price, but that isn’t what the vast majority of people will be paying every day.

About the only time I needed a very short trip was zipping around the CBD on a tram. And such a trip is free. For the record, it’s also much faster than walking, plus the trams are frequent and on almost every main street in the grid.

Opal isn’t only cheaper for very short trips. It’s cheaper than the $5 Myki minimum fare for most off-peak trips within Sydney, and for most bus trips.

The free tram zone isn’t much use unless you either drive or walk to the CBD in the first place - if you travel in by public transport, you’ve already paid for a time-based fare anyway. If you walk to the CBD, you’re probably fit enough that walking within the free tram zone is faster anyway. So it only really benefits the people who drive.

It’s $16.80 plus whatever your fare is. If you’ve already paid $17 to use the network for the day, this is a pretty hefty hike on top of that charge. As for going to the airport more than once a week, I’m not sure how common that is. Most people only go there once.

All the people working at the airport make multiple trips to the airport every week. They’re the people who’d be most affected by the surcharge if there was no weekly cap. Tourists are traveling to the airport infrequently anyway.

Our tickets kick both your arses. You can buy a cash ticket anywhere here as a tourist, the max you’ll pay is $5 for the day. Including the trains to/from the airport. It’s $4 daily cap if you have a SmartRider. If you are only going on a one-way trip, it’s something like $3. Transport in the CBD is free, Melbourne stole that idea off us.

Last time I was in Perth was a few years ago now, but you could only get a smart card ticket if you were a resident. There was no way to get one as a tourist, and NFC credit card payment wasn’t supported, either. I hope they’ve fixed that. The airport bus was cheap, but infrequent. Same with the trains - there was always a lot of waiting.

You can avoid the airport train surcharge in Sydney by catching the 350 or 420 buses. You can also avoid SkyBus in Melbourne by catching the bus to Broadmeadows, although it’s a bit of a walk from the main terminals, and it’s infrequent, and Broadmeadows isn’t exactly a central location.

Nah, Tokyo has better public transport than HK. There’s JR East, plus the subways, plus the buses. It’s really good.

You can use Suica/Pasmo to pay for things from vending machines and some convenience stores in Tokyo. Hong Kong isn’t the only place where you can use public transport cards for payment.

Sydney’s point-to-point ticketing system sucks. The prices of tickets suck.

Melbourne has no off-peak discount, and although the most expensive Opal trip ($16) is more expensive than the most expensive Myki trip ($10), the cheapest Opal trip is a lot cheaper. Sydney’s caps kick in faster, too. In Sydney, there’s no need to pre-purchase a “pass” as you need to with Myki – the cap just kicks in as soon as you travel enough.

The fact that the fastest way to get most places 1km away in the CBD is to walk, sucks.

That’s true of Melbourne as well. I used to commute from Flemington to the CBD daily, and walking was a more reliable way to get to work and back. Making a city more walkable is a noble goal.

Sydney might have better coverage to Melbourne out in the suburbs, and certainly have better busses out there. But again the ticketing shenanigans negates a lot of this. Unless you have a periodical ticket (weekly/monthly), there is no flexibility. You paid a fair to North Ryde? You’re going to North Ryde. You can’t change your mind. You can’t decide to hop off at Woolies on the way home and get back on. Your ticket is valid for just the journey you initially paid for. Did I mention it sucks?

You obviously haven’t actually been in Sydney for over a decade.

It sure is nice to hop on a train to Sydney Airport, though. Pity it costs $25 or something to do it.

What? It’s under $20 for a trip from the airport to the city. There’s also a weekly cap on the surcharge that kicks in really quickly, so if you need to go to the airport more than once in a week, you’re effectively paying regular train fares after the first day.

Going to the airport in Melbourne with a two hour Myki fare plus SkyBus is substantially more expensive than using the airport train in Sydney, and there’s no fare cap on SkyBus for people who need to travel to the airport multiple times in a week.

As someone with apartments in both cities, these constant, “Sydney sucks,” rants full of misinformation really don’t paint a good picture of Melbourne.

See this is bullshit. People were moved out of Victoria St (Flemington) to the towers in Flemington and North Melbourne, and now the towers are set to be demolished. You can promise them a home after the site is redeveloped, but that’s another disruptive move, pushing it up to three moves in just a few years (Victoria St, towers, who knows where, and back again).

Given the density of the towers (about 400 bedrooms across 180 apartments for the standard tower design), I don’t even know where they plan to move everyone. It’s a lot of people to house with public and social housing already over-stretched.

Then what do you do for the people who rely on their trusted neighbours? All the old people with mobility issues who call a younger, more able-bodied neighbour to assist them when they need it? Or the people who call a neighbour when they have a medical emergency to help out until paramedics arrive? Or the people who call a neighbour when they need a babysitter in an emergency? Or even just looking after each other’s kids after school on alternate days? Or just knowing who your neighbours are that will look out for you?

What do you do about people with ties to the rest of the community? For example the Việt Catholic community centred on St Vincent’s in Flemington? The Muslim community associated with the mosque on Boundary Rd? All the people working in the local supermarkets and cafés? A lot of these people don’t drive, so they’ll be forced to get another job, and lose entitlements like years of service for long service leave entitlement.

Forcing children to change schools can be particularly disruptive. If they’re also moved to a different area, they usually lose contact with their circle of friends. This is particularly devastating for children with autism spectrum disorders who can’t deal with change easily.

Calling the company they outsourced housing to “Building Communities” is particularly insulting because all they’re doing is destroying communities.

Yet Labor has simply continued privatisation, even going as far as privatising public housing. They’re knocking down public housing and replacing it with a mix of “social and affordable housing” which they’ve contracted out management of to a company called Building Communities for the next 40 years.

Neither party has a good record on infrastructure. Cain had a policy of “no road overpasses”, leaving us with all the railway grade crossings and killer intersections on arterial roads.

Labor left the Upfield line with manual gates at level crossings, and hand operated miniature lever frames with rotting 1910s-vintage 2-aspect somersault type semaphore signals. It was Kennett who put in the automatic boom gates and 3-aspect colour light signals.

Going back further, it was the Liberals who introduced the “new deal for country rail”, finally updating the steam-era timetables for more efficient use of diesel traction.

Kennett’s implementation of privatised metropolitan rail was stupid. He seemed to be trying to imitate London in ways that don’t fit Melbourne. The train network in particular doesn’t lend itself to an east/west split. The terms of the deal effectively ensured the refurbished Comeng fleets would be incompatible, and the new trains would need to come from different suppliers. We’re still paying for the inefficiencies that caused. The way revenue and maintenance was split effectively doomed M-Train from the beginning.

Labor appointed a series of incompetent transport ministers. For example Batchelor with his claim that the Liberals’ plan to abolish Metcard zone 3 would “cause too many people to catch public transport”. I mean, you can say the infrastructure wouldn’t be able to meet anticipated demand without upgrades or something, but if more people use it, it’s doing its job.

Labor’s back to breaking promises on infrastructure. Signaling and trunback upgrades for the western lines have been cancelled, capacity upgrades for Upfield (e.g. Gowrie turnback) have been cancelled. Additional track on the corridor to Ballarat (at least as far as Melton) has been cancelled. The airport train will likely never happen. Yet somehow there’s money for elevated rail through Brunswick (scared of losing to the Greens) and more upgrades for the sand belt (more marginal seats).

As far as I can tell the state Liberals don’t really have a coherent plan for anything at this point.

If you compare Victoria’s toll roads to NSW, CityLink is somewhat comparable to the M5 and M4 tollways built by the Liberals. Labor promised to pay tolls for residents of areas served by these roads. They actually did it. With increasing density, the cost eventually became excessive and the Liberals removed the tolls on these roads altogether. The Liberals also removed the surcharge from suburban stations on the airport line, and put a weekly cap on airport station surcharges that kicks in after one return trip (so airport workers are only hit worth about $20/week). Victorian Labor has no intention of winding down CityLink tolls, and put in a very generous extension for Transurban as part of the WestGate Tunnel deal.

Fundamentally, I see Kennett as a symptom rather than the actual disease. Labor ran up crippling debt with little to show for it, and Kennett was elected on the promise of sorting out the state’s finances. His plan to do that was to sell everything. With the way Labor is running up debt again, it’s only a matter of time before the next Kennett is elected, but this time there won’t be anything left to sell. I’m not looking forward to it.

They blame him for stuff he didn’t do as well. For example I’ve seen him blamed for introducing pokies (Kirner) and tolls on Eastlink (Bracks after backflipping on the “no new toll roads” promise).

Also, you’d think a quarter of a century (yes, Kennett left office 25 years ago) would be long enough to make a few changes, yet here we are as the state with the lowest spend on health per capita, lowest spend on education per capita, lowest proportion of public housing, highest debt-to-GSP ratio, and a completely ineffective anti-corruption body. Labor keeps granting extensions on toll roads to Transurban, allowing Crown to keep operating no matter how dodgy they are, and doing property developers favours. Yet we have the highest paid premier in the country.

How long can you keep blaming Kennett for stuff neither party is interested in addressing? I have no coincidence in Victorian politicians at all.

Well considering there are people still blaming Kennett for everything 25 years later (even things that happened before and after he was in office), I’m sure people can keep blaming Dan for stuff for at least a decade.

They’ve effectively privatised it. They’ve established a non-profit company called Building Communities they they’ve contracted out building and managing “social and affordable housing” to for the next forty years. The government will still own the land that the buildings are on, but housing will no longer be managed by Homes Victoria (which itself was spun off from the Department of Families Fairness and Housing Victoria to manage public housing). It all stinks, and it’s going to lead to worse outcomes for everyone.