Myki is Hinky

Myki cards are the new wave of metro tickets. They're meant to last years without a hitch. Mine lasted three weeks before failing.

Here's what happens if your Myki card stops working:

You have to take it to one of two locations, both in the city. That's an inconvenience of monumental stature. The city sucks for a single journey - it takes two hours out of your day even if it's a quick in-and-out, and there's nothing to do in the CBD that you can't do better in multiple other spots across the suburbs.

Once at one of their two stores, they assess if you damaged your card, or it just failed due to being made from useless cheap crap. If it is damaged, there's a $10 fee. If not, no fee. Mine was certainly not damaged, so that's fine. If I had opted on posting it in, which is such a stupid idea I didn't mention it before, they could cast judgement on it without your supervision to set them straight. It's nice to believe they'd be honest, but you really can't trust anyone these days.

After filling in a form, they give you a replacement card. However, it's empty. All your money on your old card is temporarily unavailable, so you have to spend to fill the new card again.

Though you do not lose the money from the other card (assuming your card is registered), when you get it transferred it is no longer associated with the Myki Pass (i.e. Monthly), instead it is turned into Myki Money, which is the equivalent of a Daily (more expensive). Why? Because it takes 10 working days, and by then you've not been using those days, so you get fully reimbursed. Fair enough, but TEN DAYS!???

This is ridiculous. 1) Transfer of funds should be immediate and seamless. 2) Card failure should never happen; my Credit Card and ATM Card have never failed on me, after years of use. And 3) only having a limited number of places where this assessment can happen, in less-than-convenient locations, is impractical.

For a system that cost $1.3bn or whatever it was, and was five years overdue, things as simple as replacing faulty cards should be much better handled than this.

Unacceptable.

Hidden Gems

Every so often, to waste time and go for a fun drive, Rob will call up and say "It's a nice day, let's go looking for possible locations we can film at". A few weeks ago we travelled out to Mt Buffalo, which when it's out of ski season is a fantastic mountain covered in uniquely beautiful rock formations and fresh waterfalls.

And yesterday we headed out to Heathcote, and a spot called Pink Cliffs. A previous film had been shot there, so Rob was familiar with it. It seemed like a great place to set something like a miniature Indiana Jones, with its low set clay hills. It's a unique look, but limited in its possibilities; most angles show distinctive Australian trees on the horizon.


One of the things we are constantly fighting against is finding places we can film that don't feel like Australia. If we want to set a movie in the past, in a different country, such as a generic mediaeval era, we are not exactly spoilt for choice, like those who live in Europe or even New Zealand. Instead we have gum trees and desert. The best we can hope for is Tasmania, not unlike NZ in many respects, but even that isn't enough and is severely limited.

We headed back home, but it was early in the day yet, so we took a random detour down a side road. As we turned the corner, I thought to myself "wouldn't it be weird if we happened to find exactly what we were looking for after this completely random decision?".

And, naturally, we did find exactly that.


Emu Flat is a rural area full of farmland that is peppered with amazing rolling hills topped by enormous exposed boulders. They look like weathered castle ruins, or a giant's teeth emerging from the ground. Weathered over millennia, they are left with the appearance of boulders precariously balanced on top of each other, as though a little tap will cause them to tip over and roll down the hill.

We looked around for public access to these fields, but there appeared to be none. They were all on farmland. We will probably have to seek permission of a Farmer to film in his paddocks, which I hope won't be a big problem, if we so choose.

When I visited a local Milk Bar to ask the owners if any of the rocky fields were accessible to the public, they looked at me funny. They didn't quite understand what it was I was talking about, because to them those rocks are what they see every day, and if anything are an inconvenience the Farmers have to avoid when they cultivate their fields.

What an amazing and beautiful discovery it was, and one that so many people manage to miss out on or, at least, don't appreciate when they do see it.