Discover the indisputable rules of domestic plane etiquette.
Planes can be a wild place. All of a sudden, you’re forced into the personal space of many random strangers. You even have to share the (rather unpleasant) air with them. And something about that turns otherwise civilised people into animals. Debates on plane etiquette will pop up on the internet time and again, but we have the unquestionable list that all plane passengers should be following for a brighter world.
Read on, and take note.
1. Never put your seat back
There is never an excuse to lower the back of your seat on a domestic flight. Domestic planes are much tighter spaces and those of us who are six foot and over simply cannot squeeze our legs into the tiny gap that is left when the chair in front of us is leaning back. The maximum length of flight around Australia is what, five hours? You can sit upright for five hours. If you can’t… catch the train.
2. Don’t dig into the seat in front
Unless the seat in front of you has broken rule number one, don’t dig, bang or hang on their seat back. But if they have broken rule number three, well then they’ve made their own bed and they can get kneed in the back for it.
Think of the tall people. (Image: Getty/ Chalabala)
3. Armrests are for the middle seat
I don’t know how to make this any clearer – the middle seat sucks and the only saving grace is having both the armrests. The aisle seat has its own armrest, and the window seat can lean into the wall of the plane.
I will die on this hill.
If you’re not in the middle, stay away from the middle armrests. (Image: Getty/ Skynesher)
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4. Keep your feet to yourself
It’s the eternal mystery, but for some reason there will always be people who can’t grasp where their foot space begins and ends on a plane. Some people will also get hung up on the barefoot issue, but to be honest, I truly don’t care as long as you keep your foot in the imaginary box of your chair. And, just to remind you all, I am a tall woman saying this. If I can do it, so can you.
Watch where your feet go. (Image: Getty/ bee32)
5. Be polite
Just as with hotel staff, the obvious, yet often ignored, answer to getting the best out of people is simply to be kind and polite. That goes for both the airline staff, and your fellow guests. If you ask for things nicely and respectfully, more often than not, you’ll receive an agreeable answer. Yes, even when things seem to be going wrong.
6. Don’t push someone to switch seats
Sometimes, in plane travel, you will not be seated next to your party. Sucks to be you, but may I just say: too bad. If it’s important to sit next to your travel companions – be they friend, lover or offspring – pay the extra $20 to choose your seat ahead of time.
What you certainly should not do is guilt a fellow passenger into switching seats with you just because they’re travelling solo. If you have the same seat (or better, you may ask the question – in a casual, guilt-free tone. But if the answer is no, sit yourself down and buckle up for a ride without your nearest and dearest. It’s no one else’s fault that you’re not sitting together, and it’s likely every person on that plane has been very intentional about their seat choice.
Controversially, as someone who does love kids, I also have to apply this to parents and kids. There may be some slim exceptions to this, but in general, it’s no excuse to behave poorly.
Planes just aren’t that big, deal with your seat. (Image: Getty/ Gremlin)
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7. Switch if you can, though
Having said that, if you’re flying solo and the seat swap you’re being asking for is the exact same position (or better) in a different row, you really should just say yes. If they’re trying to force you into a middle seat though, you hold strong on that no.
8. Don’t hog the overhead bins
Some passengers are just so darn desperate to fit everything into a carry on bag, that they screw everyone else over by hogging more than their fair share of the overhead bins. The rules are, one small bag up the top, one even smaller.
Be reasonable with your carry-on. (Image: Space_Cat)
9. Wait your turn to get off the plane
There is an order to deboarding the plane, and it goes row by row. We can all agree on that. However, I do have just a couple of caveats. The first is if someone is desperate to go to the toilet, they can’t get to the plane toilet because the aisles are filled, and they’re very open and honest about the desperate need to get to the loo with passengers around them who are perhaps moving a little slowly – just step aside for one moment and let them run off. Don’t be such a stickler for the etiquette rules that you literally elbow them to stop them getting in front of you, even though you’re in no way ready to walk off the plane.
Pointing this out for a friend, not from my own life. Personally.
The other is that if someone is literally ready to race off the second the plane lands, no need to gather things or get a bag from the overhead locker, probably just let them go.
Line up, and wait. (Image: Getty/ Izusek)
Kassia Byrnes is the Native Content Editor for Australian Traveller and International Traveller. She's come a long way since writing in her diary about family trips to Grandma's. After graduating a BA of Communication from University of Technology Sydney, she has been writing about her travels (and more) professionally for over 10 years for titles like AWOL, News.com.au, Pedestrian.TV, Body + Soul and Punkee. She's addicted to travel but has a terrible sense of direction, so you can usually find her getting lost somewhere new around the world. Luckily, she loves to explore and have new adventures – whether that’s exploring the backstreets, bungee jumping off a bridge or hiking for days. You can follow her adventures on Instagram @probably_kassia.
The Grampians just might be the ultimate antidote for the metropolis, writes one returning Aussie ready to disconnect from the modern world and reconnect to the Great outdoors.
There are no kangaroos back in Chicago: they’re all here in the Grampians/Gariwerd . In the heart of the Grampians National Park’s main gateway town, Halls Gap, pods of eastern greys are eating grass beside my parked rental car beneath the stars. Next morning, when I see the backyard of my rented villa on the edge of town for the first time, there are kangaroos feeding beside a slow-moving creek, lined with river red gums.
Five hundred metres up the road, 50 or so of them are eating by the side of the road in a paddock. I pull over to watch and spot three emus. Yellow-tailed black cockatoos fly overhead towards the tall green mountains just beyond town.
‘Kee-ow, keee-oww’… their calls fuse with the maniacal cackle of a kookaburra (or 10). Gawd, how I’ve missed the sound of them. Far above, a wedge-tailed eagle watches, and there you go: the ‘great birds of Australia’ trifecta, all half a kay from the town limits.
Exchanging city chaos for country calm
The park is renowned for its significant diversity of native fauna species. (Image: Visit Victoria/Robert Blackburn)
I’ve come to the Grampians to disconnect, but the bush offers a connection of its own. This isn’t just any bush, mind you. The Grampians National Park is iconic for many reasons, mostly for its striking sandstone mountains – five ridges run north to south, with abrupt, orange slopes which tumble right into Halls Gap – and for the fact there’s 20,000 years of traditional rock art. Across these mountains there are more than 200 recorded sites to see, created by the Djab Wurrung, Jardwadjali and Gunditjmara peoples. It’s just like our outback… but three hours from Melbourne.
I’ve come here for a chance at renewal after the chaos of my life in America’s third-largest city, Chicago, where I live for now, at the whim of a relative’s cancer journey. Flying into Melbourne’s airport, it only takes an hour’s drive to feel far away from any concept of suburbia. When I arrive in Halls Gap two hours later, the restaurant I’m eating at clears out entirely by 7:45pm; Chicago already feels a lifetime ago.
The trails and treasures of the Grampians
Grampians National Park /Gariwerd covers almost 2000 square kilometres. (Image: Ben Savage)
Though the national park covers almost 2000 square kilometres, its best-known landmarks are remarkably easy to access. From my carpark here, among the cockatoos and kangaroos on the fringe of Halls Gap, it only takes 60 seconds’ driving time before I’m winding my way up a steep road through rainforest, deep into the mountains.
Then it’s five minutes more to a carpark that serves as a trailhead for a hike to one of the park’s best vantage points, The Pinnacles . I walk for an hour or so, reacquainting myself with the smells and the sounds of the Aussie bush, before I reach it: a sheer cliff’s edge lookout 500 metres up above Halls Gap.
Overlooking the vast Grampians landscape from Hollow Mountain. (Image: Robert Blackburn)
There are hikes and there are lookouts and waterfalls all across this part of the park near town. Some are a short stroll from a carpark; others involve long, arduous hikes through forest. The longest is the Grampians Peaks Trail , Victoria’s newest and longest iconic walk, which runs 160 kilometres – the entire length of Grampians National Park.
Local activities operator Absolute Outdoors shows me glimpses of the trail. The company’s owner, Adrian Manikas, says it’s the best walk he’s done in Australia. He says he’s worked in national parks across the world, but this was the one he wanted to bring his children up in.
“There’s something about the Grampians,” he says, as he leads me up a path to where there’s wooden platforms for tents, beside a hut looking straight out across western Victoria from a kilometre up in the sky (these are part of the guided hiking options for the trail). “There are things out here that you won’t see anywhere else in Australia.” Last summer, 80 per cent of the park was damaged by bushfire, but Manikas shows me its regrowth, and tells me of the manic effort put in by volunteers from town – with firefighters from all over Australia – to help save Halls Gap.
Spot wildflowers. (Image: Visit Victoria)
We drive back down to Halls Gap at dusk to abseil down a mountain under the stars, a few minutes’ walk off the main road into town. We have headlamps, but a full moon is enough to light my way down. It takes blind faith to walk backwards down a mountain into a black void, though the upside is I can’t see the extent of my descent.
Grampians National Park at sunset. (Image: Wine Australian)
The stargazing is ruined by the moon, of course, but you should see how its glow lights up the orange of the sandstone, like in a theme park. When I’m done, I stand on a rocky plateau drinking hot chocolate and listening to the Aussie animals who prefer nighttime. I can see the streets of Halls Gap off in the distance on this Friday night. The restaurants may stay open until 8pm tonight.
What else is on offer in The Grampians?
Travelling along the Wimmera River in Dimboola. (Image: Chris McConville)
You’ll find all sorts of adventures out here – from rock climbing to canoeing to hiking – but there’s more to the Grampians than a couple of thousand square kilometres of trees and mountains. Halls Gap may be known to most people, but what of Pomonal, and Dimboola, and Horsham? Here in the shadow of those big sandstone mountains there are towns and communities most of us don’t know to visit.
And who knew that the Grampians is home to Victoria’s most underrated wine region ? My disconnection this morning comes not in a forest, but in the tasting rooms and winery restaurants of the district. Like Pomonal Estate, barely 10 minutes’ drive east of Halls Gap, where UK-born chef Dean Sibthorp prepares a locally caught barramundi with lentil, pumpkin and finger lime in a restaurant beside the vines at the base of the Grampians. Husband-and-wife team Pep and Adam Atchison tell me stories as they pour their prize wines (shiraz is the hero in these parts).
Dine in a restaurant beside vines at Pomonal Estate. (Image: Tourism Australia)
Three minutes’ drive back down the road, long-time mates Hadyn Black and Darcy Naunton run an eclectic cellar door out of a corrugated iron shed, near downtown Pomonal. The Christmas before last, half the houses in Pomonal burnt down in a bushfire, but these locals are a resilient lot.
The fires also didn’t stop the construction of the first art centre in Australia dedicated to environmental art in a nature-based precinct a little further down the road (that’s Wama – the National Centre for Environmental Arts), which opened in July. And some of the world’s oldest and rarest grape vines have survived 160 years at Best’s Wines, outside the heritage town of Great Western. There’s plantings here from the year 1868, and there’s wines stored in century-old barrels within 150-year-old tunnels beneath the tasting room. On the other side of town, Seppelt Wines’ roots go back to 1865. They’re both only a 30-minute drive from Halls Gap.
Great Western is a charming heritage town. (Image: Griffin Simm)
There’s more to explore yet; I drive through tiny historic towns that barely make the map. Still part of the Grampians, they’re as pretty as the mountains behind them: full of late 19th-century/early 20th-century post offices, government offices and bank buildings, converted now to all manner of bric-a-brac stores and cafes.
The Imaginarium is one, in quirky Dimboola, where I sleep in the manager’s residence of an old National Australia Bank after a gourmet dinner at the local golf club, run by noted chef and teacher, Cat Clarke – a pioneer of modern Indigenous Australian cooking. Just south, I spend an entire afternoon at a winery, Norton Estate Wines, set on rolling calico-coloured hills that make me think of Tuscany, chit-chatting with owners Chris and Sam Spence.
Being here takes me back two decades, when I lived here for a time. It had all seemed as foreign as if I’d driven to another planet back then (from Sydney/Warrane), but there seemed something inherently and immediately good about this place, like I’d lived here before.
And it’s the Australian small-town familiarity of the Grampians that offers me connection back to my own country. Even in the better-known Halls Gap, Liz from Kerrie’s Creations knows I like my lattes with soy milk and one sugar. And while I never do get the name of the lady at the local Ampol station, I sure know a lot about her life.
Kookaburras are one of some 230 bird species. (Image: Darren Donlen)
You can be a local here in a day; how good is that? In Chicago, I don’t even know who my neighbour is. Though each day at dusk – when the kangaroos gather outside my villa, and the kookaburras and the black cockatoos shout out loud before settling in to sleep – I prefer the quieter connection I get out there in the bush, beneath these orange mountains.
A traveller’s checklist
Staying there
Sleep beside the wildlife on the edge of Halls Gap at Serenity .
