The travelling media pack on the election bus quickly filing stories and pictures between engagements with the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/News Corp.

For the next seven weeks in almost every electorate across the country, the nation’s media are being corralled back and forth in the circus that is the federal election campaign.

It’s the biggest sell of Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten’s lives and they know one big hiccup can end it for them under the constant public gaze.

But behind every grimace, plastered grin or awkward moment captured on film, if you turn the cameras around, you’ll see another world of chaos behind the scenes.

Last Sunday night and Monday morning, depending on which camp you were on, cab after cab delivered journalists through the Canberra cold to the capital’s RAAF base where cameras, and suitcases of coats, laptops, lipsticks and stationary were loaded into the vast bowels of an Air Force Hercules.

Media aboard a Hercules C130 which was used to ferry them around until more suitable travel could be arranged. Picture: Kym SmithSource:News Corp Australia

Every three years there’s some level of interest in the behind-the-scenes of election campaigning.

Tweeters demand to know why taxpayers are laying it on for journalists (we pay our own way) and imagine the luxury that must come with travelling with the country’s VIPs.

The reality is quite different.

There is probably no more compelling example than the toilet reporters are forced to use on these massive, noisy, uncomfortable cargo planes used until a more conventional charter plane can be arranged.

Consisting of a hole in a high step, there’s a flimsy curtain for modesty that would make women in clothing-store change rooms blush.

On the road, travel is on standard buses nursing heavy cameras, working dying smart phones and fighting off travel sickness as people file to relentless deadlines during 12-hour days.

Media are kept to a strict routine, ordered on and off buses and between hotel rooms and planes on a strict schedule.

On jobs, a scrum heaves and spends down streetscapes as a mob of cameras, dictators and Tweet accounts document every step, look and conversation had in the constant 24-hour news cycle.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten relaxes and jokes around on the campaign bus in Mackay. Picture: Kym SmithSource:News Corp Australia

Ordinary shoppers complain the aisles are blocked and teachers gasp as school libraries are taken over by the swarm.

Each night, the plane resembles a bar, with burnt-out reporters and staffers perched on armrests nursing a drink in a rare window of downtime.

It has been known to get rowdy, but participants adhere to the off-the-record rules in the spare moments, when everything is not fair game.

Bill Shorten’s campaign has started at an unusually relaxed pace for media who remember the breakneck speeds of his predecessor Kevin Rudd.

It’s been an ordered ordeal, with a central theme of education as he crossed through regional Queensland for the best part of a week.

Basing himself in Townsville, he put in day visits to schools, went on street walks and shared a chocolate birthday cake with wife Chloe.

Press conferences ran long enough, complaints about access were dealt with and the kind of blow-ups that dogged the Rudd 2013 bus were nowhere to be seen.

On Tuesday, media who had been on the 2013 Rudd bus found themselves back at the same Townsville pub they had frequented three years earlier which the Labor leader Shorten helped depose, then reinstall.

Media are kept to a strict routine while covering the election, ordered on and off buses and between hotel rooms and planes on a strict schedule. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/News Corp.Source:News Corp Australia

On that instance, Rudd was on. He was always on. At one point he went outside and sang happy birthday to a young lady at her party.

They loved it. Selfies were taken, journalists filed, tweets whirred.

This time, a relaxed Shorten chatted with the media pack, made jokes, had a beer, ordered a steak, considered a game of pool.

He chatted with locals who approached him and invited any fit journalists to join his daily morning running club of staffers and AFP officers.

He’s taken a genuinely approachable approach and the array of advisers and colleagues travelling with him are also accessible daily, including powerbroking Senator Sam Dastyari, former Queensland campaign director and senate candidate Anthony Chisholm and education spokeswoman Kate Ellis among them.

Over on the Turnbull bus, time is tight.

Unlike Mr Shorten, the Prime Minister ticked off four states in the first four days of the campaign bus, jumping from Brisbane to Sydney to Melbourne to Adelaide and back to Sydney as he wasted no time stamping his footprint on the way.

But he has withdrawn from media as soon as the cameras turn off and the bus has been a pollie-free zone.

The exception was a visit from former small business minister and retiring MP Bruce Billson, who held court entertaining the media waiting for the arrival of Turnbull to a local brewery.

For good measure, he snuck two cartons of beer from the brewery Turnbull visited onto the bus before getting aboard to say one final goodbye.

You can’t really blame Turnbull for not making an appearance on the bus thus far.

His official car — “C1” is an impressive set of wheels. The white BMW is bullet proof with dark tint and its on security convy following from behind.

But the Coalition appear keen to avoid a campaign gaffe like the 2013 campaign when Jaymes Diaz tried, and failed, to explain the party’s six-point plan to stop the boats.

The Prime Minister has been meeting with candidates but they are quickly pushed aside so the media don’t throw any difficult questions their way.

With limited time on the ground, journalists resorted to live crosses on board the bus and voicing broadcast reports from plane seats.

A seven hour stint at a capital city hotel is the norm, as check-in becomes 11pm and check-out not long after 6am.

Journalists regularly can’t remember their room numbers when they check-out because they haven’t been at the hotel long enough.

Media have to manage working to 12 hour deadlines on a daily basis. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/News Corp.Source:News Corp Australia

Turnbull will make a public visit while Kochie and Sam or Karl and Lisa are on air, but the 6pm news journos will do a live cross for the evening news in a different state.

The reality is, team Turnbull are working smarter, not harder.

Turnbull is locking in two or three visits to neighbouring electorates each morning before finishing campaigning for the day.

On the first full day of the campaign Turnbull had racked up visits to three different electorates before Mr Shorten had even hit the ground.

And it’s dominated the media cycle.

The reality was, after visiting three electorates by lunch he didn’t make it to another election after midday.

That’s because Turnbull didn’t need to. The job had been done.

The strategy has allowed the Prime Minister time to attend lunch donations, have a lengthy conversation with Barack Obama and hold high level tactics meetings in the afternoon while the media are travelling to a new destination.

Over the next seven weeks, leaders and the media will traipse through every school, cafe, hardware store, fruit market and shopping centre who’ll have them in a whirlwind of hand-shaking, baby-kissing, jobs-promoting marathon to the July 2 poll.

The campaign machine is well and truly rolling.