By the time Tony co-founded Lonely Planet Publications in 1973, he already had the travel bug. And ever since, travel and discovery have been at the heart of his life and career.
◄ Rory Maclean – author of numerous travel books including Magic Bus – puts on a magic annual travel festival in the very attractive little Dorset town of Sherborne. I was there for the recent weekend and if I say nice things about the festival perhaps Rory will invite me back for 9-11 April 2027!
Rory and I started the festival with a session of travellers’ tales, including when Rory stayed with Maureen and me in Australia for a week when he was writing Magic Bus. ▼
▲ A festival highlight was Sara Wheeler (no relation!) in conversation with Colin Thubron about her new biography Jan Morris: A Life. Well of both the Morrises, James Morris before he became Jan Morris as well. I met Jan, who died in 2020, on a number of occasions and also paired Jan with Harry’s Bar in Lonely Planet’s In Her Footsteps, a book which matched famous women with places you might have run into them. Harry’s Bar in Venice was certainly the perfect places for Jan (and James) although for James (before he became she) you’d have to say the Everest Base Camp was the iconic location.
Other favourite talks on the weekend included Adam Weymouth talking about his book – magic again – Lone Wolf about how wolves have successfully regenerated their populations in many European countries, even Luxembourg has at least one wolf. The author follows a GPS-collared wolf in Slovenia, thinking its movements would delineate its pack’s territorial limits, since wolves are so protective of their own territory. Instead this particular male wolf set out north out of Slovenia, turns west and crosses mountains in the winter snow in Austria and turns south into Italy in the Dolomites and, not far north of Verona, bumps into a solo female wolf. Well there’s a strange meeting, romance follows and as a result there’s a successful Dolomite wolf pack. What a wonderful story, it almost brings a tear to the eye, this Slovenian wolf travelling for months and over a thousand km, to find romance? Close to Verona? Of course she’s named Juliet. Lone Wolf went on to win the inaugural £10,000 Sherborne Prize for Travel Writing.
◄ I did manage a little sightseeing in Sherborne, apart from the Travel Festival. Of course the wonderful Sherborne Abbey, founded in 750 AD was a highlight. This is the Abbey’s fan vaulted ceiling, dating from 1425 and one of the best examples of its kind.
Another favourite talk was Harbours & Their Masters: Sailing into (Nearly) Every Harbour in Britain & Ireland by Mark Ashley-Miller. Mark sails around the British Isles and Ireland interviewing many of the harbour master – 256 harbour masters, he visited 310 harbours. I was particularly happy that he names St Kilda as his favourite stop on his whole voyage. No, I have not been to St Kilda (go to the Outer Hebrides off Scotland and then keep travelling west), but it’s certainly on my list.
It’s also a star report in Judith Schalansky’s wonderful book Remote Islands. Many of her 50 remote islands are indeed extremely remote and in recent weeks I’ve added two more ticks – Christmas Island and the Cocos Keeling Islands – to my check list, so I have now visited eight of them.
◄ Back to sightseeing, it’s only a short walk to the outskirts of town and the ruins of Sherborne Old Castle, Yes, there’s a Sherborne New Castle as well.
◄ Rory Maclean – author of numerous travel books including Magic Bus – puts on a magic annual travel festival in the very attractive little Dorset town of Sherborne. I was there for the recent weekend and if I say nice things about the festival perhaps Rory will invit...
Having ticked off Christmas Island I continued another hour’s flight west across the Indian Ocean (and another 30 minutes time change) to the Cocos Keeling Islands, 1000km away. There are 27 islands around the Cocos Keeling Atoll, but only two of them are inhabited. W...
There are a number of Christmas Islands around the world, this one is an Australian territory technically part of Western Australia with a population of about 1700. Straight line it’s only 500km south of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, but the only flights to Chris...
I’ve started 2026 with a A$861.15 (that’s US$576) refund from Booking.com, but wow it took a long time to get it! I did a number of flights in late 2025 on my visits to Nepal, Seychelles, Mauritius, Reunion, Jordan and finally Algeria. Some of the flights were made...
I read – it’s a quick read – David Szalay’s 2019 book Turbulence, an interesting series of connected ‘flight’ chapters, each titled with its airport departure and arrival codes and each with a character who continues into the next chapter. The New York Times review wh...
I love absurd travel suggestions – ones you read and you think ‘where on earth did that come from?’ The Australian newspapers The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald featured a travel enquiry: • If the only flight option is Ryanair, should we ditch that destination?...
There are lots of places still to visit on my travel bucket list and Greenland is certainly one of them. In recent weeks Taco Trump has emphasised that it could be important to get there sooner rather than later. After all if Trump succeeds in invading Greenland we co...
Melbourne has a new subway line – the Metro Tunnel – running through five new stations and currently having a soft opening, before the schedule launches full tilt on 1 February 2026. The new Parkville Station will probably be the most useful new station, since it’s at...
Melbourne photographer Paul Dodd asked me to take part in his photo project The Chair. I was one of 40-odd subjects, each photographed in his studio, seated on the same chair, under identical lighting conditions, and captured in timeless black and white. We were encou...
The last couple of years – travelling up the coast of Albania, around Greece close to Athens and by sea from Athens to Corfu, a Mediterranean stretch of Algeria – has made me think how much of a circuit of the Mediterranean I have managed to cover over the years. Li...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013