Hot Air Balloon Rides in Australia

Victoria holds two of them. The Melbourne and Yarra Valley pair leave from opposite kinds of ground. One lifts off near the city and drifts across office towers and the street grid while the traffic is still thin. The other goes up in Victoria's wine country about an hour east, where cold air settles on the valley floor overnight and the vine rows surface out of the mist as the sun climbs. North of the state border, the Gold Coast flights work the Queensland hinterland, the belt of rolling farmland and rainforest ridge that sits immediately behind the surf beaches. Tamborine Mountain and the Numinbah Valley belong to that country, and the whole plateau is what is left of an old shield volcano. An hour south, across the state line again, Byron Bay sits at the easternmost point of the mainland, which makes its sunrise the first on the continent. Closer in to Sydney, Camden Valley is a wine region roughly 70 minutes from the centre, on the Nepean River to the south-west, and the Hunter Valley lies about two hours north.

Australian ballooning runs year round in most regions, which spares you the seasonal scramble, though it does not spare you the weather; the best time to fly page explains why a calm morning beats a warm one. Every flight here goes at dawn, which fixes the meeting time somewhere most people would rather be asleep. You gather in the dark and drive to whichever paddock the pilot settled on overnight, then watch the envelope come up in the headlights. Crews usually put a rope in your hands and ask you to pull, which is as close as most passengers get to understanding how the thing is rigged. Once you are up, the pilot has height to play with and nothing else, and how pilots steer covers the business of hunting for a wind that goes the right way. Landings happen in stubble and open paddocks, so check the packing notes before you dress for it. What sits inside a ticket differs between operators, and the cost page breaks down the usual components.