The budget training has been done for another year, and so I wandered across Southern Cross Railway Station to get my Melbourne PAD. I was obviously going for the "leading lines thing", but thought that the two in the foreground would make for a good starting point for the image.

It's fortunate that I allowed myself a little bit of time after the course because I thought it would be simply a case of stepping out to the street, and hailing a cab back to the airport. Not this time. I was waiting at the taxi rank outside the station for about 20 minutes with not a single for hire cab arriving or even passing me in that time. In the end I decided to go for a wander and went as far as the Crown casino. Still nothing. Time was ticking down to get to my flight and I was starting to feel a little bit panicky. In the end I decided to abandon the taxi option and follow the signs to the airport bus service. And then panicked some more when I saw that the lines stretch back so far that they covered about five busloads worth of people. And theoretically the frequency was every 10 minutes. In reality buses were arriving more frequently than that so I managed to catch one and get to the airport on time.

Melbourne does not, of course, have a direct rail link from the city to the airport because there are too many vested interests whose nose would be put out of joint by such a thing.