Hot Air Balloon Rides in Melbourne & the Yarra Valley
Two rides here, both at dawn: 371 EUR over the centre of Melbourne, 304 EUR over the Yarra Valley vineyards an hour east, transfer included.
Victoria puts two balloon flights on this site and they could hardly be less alike. One crosses the middle of Melbourne at 371 EUR, the higher price of the two and the rarer permission: very few cities anywhere let balloons over the central business district. The other, at 304 EUR, works the Yarra Valley, Victoria's wine country about an hour east, and comes with a transfer. Both go up at first light, because that is the only window the air allows.
Over the city, and over the vines
The Melbourne flight is worth understanding for what it is. A balloon cannot be steered in the ordinary sense, so a city crossing depends on the wind pointing the right way on the morning you happen to be booked. When it does, you pass over the tower blocks and the bends of the Yarra with the streets still mostly empty underneath. When it does not, the balloon goes wherever the air will take it. Breakfast afterwards is an optional extra rather than part of the ticket. The Yarra Valley gives you a completely different morning. Cold air drains onto the valley floor overnight and settles there, so the first thing you see from the basket is fog in the low ground with vine rows and gum trees pushing up through it. The valley is grazing country as much as vineyard, and the ridges hold the light long before the floor does.
Booking two very different mornings
Australian ballooning runs year round in most regions and Victoria is no exception, though the winter fog that makes the valley photographs also makes for a genuinely cold basket, so the best time to fly and what to wear pages both earn their keep here. Whichever you book, the flight sits inside a much longer morning: meeting in the dark, the drive to the launch field, inflation, the air time, then the retrieve. Crews normally invite passengers to help drag the envelope out and hold it open while the fans run, and that part is more interesting than it sounds. Once you leave the ground the pilot's only real control is height, which is the whole subject of how pilots steer. Marginal weather scrubs a flight rather than shortening it. Age, height and mobility limits vary between operators and the who can fly page sets out the usual ones. If a glass appears once you are back on the ground, the tradition behind it is older than it looks.
Melbourne Hot Air Balloon Flight over the City at Sunrise
Melbourne is one of a very small number of cities anywhere that permits hot air balloons over its central business district, and this flight uses that permission at first light, when the air above the city is calmest and the streets are still close to empty. Where the balloon actually goes depends on the wind, as it always does, but on a morning that lines up you drift across the towers and the river with the whole grid laid out underneath. Preparation is part of the deal. Passengers help the pilot get the balloon ready, which means watching the envelope fill and stand up while the fans and burners run, a process louder and more physical than the calm of the flight that follows. Then comes about an hour in the air, quiet apart from the burner, before the crew picks a spot to land and brings you down. Breakfast afterwards is optional rather than included. By the time the balloon is packed away, a start in the dark and an hour on your feet in a basket tend to have made the case for it.
Yarra Valley Morning Hot Air Balloon Flight with Transfer
Cold air slides off the ridges into the Yarra Valley overnight and settles on the floor until the sun burns it away, which is why the balloon goes up at first light and why you often start the flight climbing out of mist. The vine rows come back in strips as it thins. Victoria's wine country sits about an hour east of Melbourne, and from a basket it reads as farmland with vineyards set into it, cut by the river and closed in by wooded hills. A transfer is part of the booking, which removes the main practical obstacle to a dawn flight: getting yourself to a launch field in the dark, in a region where the field changes with the wind. Once everyone is on site the pilot puts passengers to work. Helping rig the balloon means hauling the envelope out flat and holding the mouth open while the fans fill it. Then the burners go in and the whole thing stands up over your head. The flight runs about an hour above the wine country, quiet apart from the burner firing every so often and slow enough that you can watch the same paddock for minutes at a time. Breakfast afterwards is optional rather than included. Whether you want it depends on how you feel about a full meal at an hour you would normally still be asleep.