The Ash cloud experience of last month found me trapped on the mainland when I wanted to be home, and gave the chance for a new experience – sailing on the Spirit of Tasmania.
This much vaunted tourist experience, the gateway to our Island, and first impression for thousands of visitors each week, was an interesting one.
While car drivers and passengers had their own, and largely unavoidable queue-ing to do, we car-less passengers assembled in a lounge on shore, reached by a circuitous route among the gantries and up and down various stairwells, and into a lounge resembling nothing so much as a Greyhound bus station in East L.A.
There one waited for about an hour. No blame, I just got there too early. But so did almost everyone else too. Catching boats, you generally don’t want to be late. Finally, a door was opened and down a dingy corridor we all filed.
Here it really started to go wrong.
Energized and encouraged by our sudden movement, we then came to a sudden halt, and queued, all hundred or so of us, while two security guys, doing their best with the people skills, asked each person, individually, that is, one at a time, a list of questions.
There were no signs or indications up till now mentioning what couldn’t be taken on board, and no bins or dumpsters. As we waited and watched, we wondered what we would not be allowed to take on board. Then, to my horror, as well as those around me, each and every bag and suitcase had to be opened in full sight of the queue, and rifled through to check for (guns? machetes? vegemite?).
Quite a few had rucksacks, which were quite difficult to unpack.
To their credit, the guys didn’t personally paw your undies, they just asked you to do it for them – directing you in lifting and pulling everything so they could see into all the corners.
The lady five people in front of me couldn’t get her things back into her case, and it took two helpful senior citizens pushing and squeezing to get it back and zipped. Heaven help some poor traveller with a cache of girlie magazines or a raunchy set of PJ’s. The thing was, though, that it took another 35 minutes, standing, most of us a little past our prime, in the drab hallway, grumbling and annoyed.
You had to ask – had the people running this never visited an airport? There, the check-in is located BEFORE you go to the lounge and so can happen at its own speed. Since we had been waiting an hour, they could have checked everyone in as they arrived, no queues and no embarrassment.
And secondly, have they never heard of X-ray machines ? Let me guess – its too expensive to buy one for TT Line. So every night and morning, a hundred people have to have their luggages searched by hand.
And in fact, let’s face it, given the totally appropriate reticence of the security guys, who looked like they would have been much more at ease patrolling a container wharf, one could have smuggled a handgun and several kilos of anything at all, by simply keeping it in amongst your clothes. SO NONE OF THIS ACTUALLY DOES ANY GOOD.
Should we expect a hijacking of the Spirit of Tasmania any day soon? This process managed to make the first taste of Tasmania like an oppressive communist regime. Once on the boat, things really improved. But first impressions count.
Please, could someone on TT Line, or Tourism Tasmania, explain if this really has to be this way.
Or fix it ?
That evening, I spoke to a dozen or so fellow passengers, introducing myself as a Tasmanian returning home. What did they think of the boarding? They were universally annoyed. People from at least six different nations were among them. We really got this wrong. I apologized on behalf of Tassie, and promised I would write about it.
And I have.
Earlier on Tasmanian Times:
My fury at TT Line. Clever Lara, says Mercury in eulogy. George loves it. Latrobe Speedway doesn’t
My fury at TT-Line. What TT- Line says. TT-Line ‘gouging’
Never wrong are they? Planes v ferries: weighing the costs
