This is from my ‘I HATE MELBOURNE AIRPORT’ Facebook page. It’s a page for venting your frustrations about Melbourne Airport.
Hopefully, all this whining might be able to get media attention, hopefully we’ll be able to get them to change their policies, hopefully…Father Christmas might really exists. Yes, I’m micturating in the metaphorical wind and I’ll admit defeat now. I think you get my point. Here’s my toxic experience on a recent trip to Bali (don’t judge me! We only wore our thongs on the plane!).
‘Your good-natured friends have agreed, under some duress, to drive across town and are now red-eyed with the pain of getting up at some un-Godly hour to drive you through what is now peak hour traffic to Tullamarine Airport. The conversations are short and snappy because they know they’ll be forced to pay for parking for the price of a mortgage on the space itself.
You never hear from them again.
You scrounge for trolleys which cost the princely sum of $8 for the two. Within a heart beat the term ‘Bastards!’ flies off your lips and flung a bit louder to ‘Greedy Bastards’ when you find out that you’re being charged the price of a cinema ticket to have a bit of cling film whicked around your luggage in case you get ‘Chappelled’.
You then get stuck in the Virgin Check-In line that is moving at the sound of glaciers melting because ‘That Very Greedy Bastard, Mr Branson’ is too busy returning dividends to his shareholders and thus, for the sake of cost-cutting, does not open the remaining six check-in desks.
By now, you are out of pocket by $33 and another term blurts: ‘Greedy ‘Effing Bastards.’
Then off to Immigration and you notice there’s an improvement on the Branson Queue – it’s longer! Melbourne Airport Management, ‘Bigger Greedier Bastards’, are also too busy providing dividends to their shareholders to have more than six desks open. The line sprouts all the way back to the car park like a never-ending complaining caterpillar: ‘BASTARDS, BASTARDS, EFFING BASTARDS!’
You’re then herded back and forth like Australian cattle destined for an Indonesian abattoir while an out-of-work actor in an orange jacket spruiks the obvious ‘STAY IN LINE!’ (like, where were we intending to go? Oh, that’s right, on a plane! Surprised he wasn’t carrying a cattle prod), then corralled into Duty Free to be chased by shop assistants who hope you’ll knock over their expensive bottles of Dior that you’ll be forced to purchase).
Then into another line to buy a $4 coffee, go through security where you have to get rid of the $4 coffee and when you ask ‘Why?’ they say ‘They’re could be something in it’ and when you say ‘What? Caffeine?’ you get the special search (shoes off, belt off, pants off…you know where this is going. ‘No, I don’t think you’ll find an expresso up there, Officer. Let me down a pint of milk and I might be kind enough to brew you a cappuccino. I’ll withhold the flakes’) buy another coffee ($4.50 now because you passed an invisible border) and finally, finally, you get to the boarding gate with five minutes to spare where you immolate into flames of abuse when an epiphany smacks you in the face: ‘SO THIS IS WHY TERRORISTS TARGET AIRPORTS?’
Flying used to be fun. Now it’s a never-ending tedium of queues, tiresome rules and expensive ones at that. You feel cheap and used like an airline vomit bag. The Greedy Effing Bastards have had their way with you again and as it’s the only major airport in Victoria you’ll know that you’ll consent to this ritual abuse once again screaming as the plane roars into the stratosphere ‘I HATE EFFING MELBOURNE AIRPORT!’
Ah, to think it used to be so much more…a paddock!
See ‘I HATE MELBOURNE AIRPORT’ on facebook and vent your spleen!