Travel Journal: Crossing the Tasman on a Cargo Ship

It's all a bit surreal that I'm here, on a cargo ship, winging my way across the Tasman Sea — across the ditch, that infamous trough of water that separates Australia from New Zealand. I was beginning to think this day would never come.

It's all a bit surreal to realise that the next land I'm going to see, going to be stepping foot on, will be the Land of the Long White Cloud. Aotearoa. Godzone. To me it's home. It's sure been a long time coming.

It's all thanks to my supporters that I'm on board the cargo vessel CC La Tour. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for making it happen and getting me home before Christmas. I'm feeling crook as a dog even on this monstrosity of a boat. I don't understand it — I never used to suffer from seasickness.

How I ended up on a cargo ship

The boat docked in Melbourne earlier than expected. A three-day wait to unload in Sydney made the captain think again — he decided against it and headed straight for Melbourne, completely skipping Sydney. The poor passengers who were supposed to disembark in Sydney just had tough luck. They've had to get flights back there today and hope they match up with their connecting flights. Aaaagh, the trials and tribulations of travel.

Meanwhile I was required to report in at the security house at West Swanson Dock at 2200 hours on Tuesday evening, the 8th of December. The agent had given me the most vague of directions.

I gave a shout-out to Beti, an awesome girl I'd met through my blog. She'd been following my journey since Iran and had left a message in my BugBitten guestbook hoping to meet up when I got to Melbourne. She'd even offered me her rooftop to pitch my tent. I love how a travel journal can build a community of readers who become friends in real life.

Entering the dock area was a hive of activity. It felt like I was part of a Transformers movie — cranes, containers and all sorts of strange-looking machinery buzzing around. This dock was a slick operation; it moves four million containers a year.

I didn't have any real expectations of my voyage. All I knew was that it was supposed to take approximately five days to get from Australia to New Zealand. Conditions were going to be a lot more pleasant than the Indonesian ferries I'd grown used to — seriously, not a rat or cockroach in sight. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

I put Tankini (my bike) on my shoulder and carried her up the long gangplank. The crew were entirely amused. Chivalry is dead.

Boarding CC La Tour and meeting the crew

I was assigned a temporary cabin until four passengers disembarked — rich Europeans who had been on board since Rotterdam. That's months back. Imagine how much that would cost. It's about €120 a day on one of these ships, but still cheaper than a cruise liner all the same. If you're trying to keep travel costs down, classic backpacking is still the most flexible way to do it, but a cargo ship works as a slow-travel splurge that pays you back in stories.

This boat is owned by a French company called CMA CGM. The vessel CC La Tour is 195.9 metres long and was built in Taiwan nine years ago. She flies the Cyprus flag. She has a dead weight of 30,442 metric tonnes and travels at an average speed of 21.5 knots. To put that into perspective, when I crewed the boat sailing from Indonesia to Australia we'd be lucky if we hit 6 knots.

The La Tour has nineteen crew. The captain is from Montenegro. He loves his fishing and his hunting and hence he loved me, because I was from New Zealand. And he just looooves New Zealand — his idea of paradise. The chief engineer is from Croatia, the chief electrician is from Ukraine, and the rest of the crew are from the Philippines. Cheap labour, you see. What they earn here lets them live like kings back in the Philippines. Their contracts run six months on, three months home. Some do eight months on, one month off. The realities of this industry are sobering once you talk to the men who keep these ships moving — the International Transport Workers' Federation does a lot of the heavy lifting on seafarers' rights, and it's worth reading about before you book.

CMA CGM operates more than 360 ships worldwide and is the third-largest shipping company in the world. This boat has 969 containers on board right now; it can take 2,200. It started out in Tilbury, Essex, of all places — close to where I worked in the UK in what now feels like another life.

Three meals a day, and three-course ones at that. I'm struggling. Breakfast is at 7:30am and you choose from a menu. Lunch is soup, followed by meat and vegies, followed by fresh fruit. Oh — and wine. The captain and his senior crew eat at the next table. It feels like we've only just finished lunch when the siren for dinner goes and it's time to eat again.

There's a recreation room with TV, DVD and chess. A swimming pool. A gym with weights, a rowing machine, a table-tennis table and (groan) — as was so kindly pointed out to me — a bicycle.

My cabin is a room with a view, of containers of course. A double bed, couch and coffee table, a desk with a table light, an ensuite bathroom complete with hot, hot water. Plus a deck chair. I'm on Level E, the fifth of eight levels.

There are two other passengers left on board. A German couple that boarded the boat in New York two months ago will disembark for a seven-week holiday around New Zealand in Tauranga, before flying back to Germany. They don't understand my funny accent. I didn't even know the boat was going to Tauranga — I was only told about Napier. If I can stay on until Tauranga, that'd be perfect. It's closer to Auckland.

The agent that I've been dealing with needs a good kick up the bum. Slack. I was mortified when I showed up at the security office on Tuesday night to find that I wasn't even on the passenger list. Deep breath, Kyles, don't panic. A few weeks back I was told to make contact with the Melbourne agent, so off I trundled down to St Kilda. Found their building, and an empty 7th floor where they were supposedly located. My blood literally ran cold. The captain didn't even realise a new passenger was joining his ship in Melbourne. All my paperwork had been completely finalised from my end over a month ago — payment, medical, health insurance, declarations, the works. As I said, the agent needs a kick up the bum.

Day One — leaving the dock

Stayed on the boat all day and watched them load containers out my window.

It's raining. I wasn't allowed off. Was moved into my new (very flash) cabin on E Deck.

Customs and Immigration finally arrived at 17:00. They were bemused. The first thing they asked me was: why? What's the attraction of travelling on a cargo ship? My map came out. I told them not one single country in all 24 had even attempted to check my bags. They reckoned they could fix that. They pulled my wet-weather gear out of my front pannier bag when an RT radio transmission came through that they had to get off the ship. Funny. I then chased them downstairs — they'd forgotten to stamp me out of the country.

Rang and sent texts in Australia saying goodbye and trying to use up all my credit rather than let it go to waste. Left the dock around 18:00. Pouring with rain. Bye, Australia. The Great Southern Land has been fun, but hard too. Smashing sunset later on. I'm sure we went past the lighthouse at Wilsons Prom — where I spent Saturday night.

Day Two — settling in

Breakfast: French toast, cereal, coffee and juice. Used the gym. Read my book — The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Inspiring.

Was summoned to chat to the captain in his office for about an hour. Talked fishing and hunting.

Lunch: soup, pork cutlets with all the trimmings, rock melon. The third officer took me through safety instructions and the rules of the boat. Demonstrated how to look like a Teletubby by wearing an immersion suit. Got to check out the lifeboat, the engine room, the bow.

Read more of my book. Dinner: soup, spaghetti bolognaise, salad, ice cream. Watched movies — Serving Sara, Traveller, MacGyver re-runs. Ship's clock advanced by one hour. Remembered to put my watch forward before bed.

Day Three — open ocean

The Tasman lived up to its reputation today. Big swells. Even a 30,000-tonne ship rolls. The captain told me at breakfast that the forecast had us in this for the next twelve hours. I went back to my cabin, lay down on the bed and watched my desk lamp swing on its arm like a metronome.

Spent most of the day trying to keep food down. Eventually gave up trying. Read another hundred pages of The Alchemist between trips to the bathroom. The crew, of course, were eating their normal three-course lunch as if nothing was happening. I caught the chief engineer outside on the bridge wing in shirtsleeves having a smoke as the bow buried into a wave.

By evening the worst had passed. I made it to dinner and managed soup. The captain laughed at me good-naturedly, then said it would all be flat by morning.

Day Four — Wellington in the distance

He was right. Woke up to a glassy sea and the first hint of land on the horizon — the dark hills of the South Island, then a smudge that I realised was the North Island fanning out behind it. We were tracking up the east coast.

Spent the morning on the bridge wing in the sun. The chief mate let me hold the binoculars. I watched a pod of dolphins surf the bow wave for an hour and didn't speak to anyone the whole time. There's something about the silence between you and a coastline you've been imagining for months that doesn't translate into words.

Lunch was the captain's special — fresh fish from a long-line he'd put out at dawn. He was very proud. The galley plated it up like a restaurant.

Afternoon: we passed Cape Palliser. I started writing the email to my parents to tell them when to expect me at Auckland airport, then deleted the lot. Some homecomings shouldn't be scheduled.

Day Five — Napier

Landed in Napier at first light. The port crew were already on the dock waiting. I stood at the rail with my cup of breakfast coffee and watched the cranes start their dance with the containers. I was already off the ship, in my head, before the gangway had even been swung over.

Customs in Napier was a doddle. The officer at the desk took one look at my passport, the bike on my shoulder, the panniers on my back, and waved me straight through. "Welcome home, mate." Three words I'd been running over and over in my head all the way across the Tasman, and they were the first three I heard.

I spent the morning wandering. Napier in summer is unreasonably pretty — the art deco frontages along Marine Parade, the Norfolk pines, the pohutukawa trees in full red bloom. New Zealand's Christmas tree, just bursting with colour against a clear blue sky. I just couldn't stop smiling.

If you're thinking of doing the same crossing in reverse, Tourism New Zealand has good practical guides for arriving by sea and continuing onwards. And if you want to spend longer exploring the country I'd just landed in, our New Zealand country guide is the best place to start — it walks through both islands month by month.

What does cargo-ship travel actually cost?

For anyone wondering: at the time I sailed (December 2010), a one-way Melbourne → Napier cabin on a CMA CGM container ship was about €120 per day, all meals included. The crossing took five days. So roughly €600 for the passage, plus the agent's booking fee. That worked out cheaper than a cruise of the same duration and roughly comparable to a one-way flight when you priced in luggage (and a 27kg bicycle). Prices have moved since — slow-travel demand pushed cargo-ship fares up sharply through the 2020s — but the model is the same.

You're paying for time, not luxury. If you can take a working week to cross an ocean, and you'd rather spend it watching the horizon than sitting in 12C, this is one of the best deals in slow travel.

Would I do it again?

Yes. Without hesitation. The seasickness on Day Three was real and I was glad it didn't last longer, but the rest of it — the slowness, the routine, the captain's office talks about fishing, the pohutukawas in Napier — was worth every hour.

If you're seriously considering a cargo-ship voyage, the practical things to know are: book through an agent who specialises in it, get a doctor's letter for the operator, expect the schedule to change more than once, take more books than you think you'll need, and accept that you'll arrive a different person than the one who boarded. That last bit is the whole point.

Bye, Australia. Hello, Aotearoa.