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.
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 the University of Melbourne which badly needed a handy Metro station.
▲ The Town Hall Station
The two new central city stations might look slightly redundant since the Town Hall Station is only a couple of hundred metres from Flinders St Station and the State Library Station is right beside the Melbourne Central Station. In fact you might find it easier to enter the State Library Station from Melbourne Central rather than from its own entrance. The Metro Tunnel line, however, runs in a different direction than the other lines through Flinders St and Melbourne Central.
Unfortunately to use the new line you still need the horrible old Myki Card. Transport Victoria have announced that they are introducing ‘tap and go’ technology to Melbourne. Tomorrow? No, they are testing it in 2026 and at some point in the future you’ll actually be able to use it. But didn’t they start testing it in 2023 at some stations? Well yes they did, but clearly three years of testing wasn’t enough, there’s more testing to be rolled out in 2026
◄ My hated Myki Card
Hasn’t anybody asked them about this before? Well yes, for one person I asked Transport Victoria why we couldn’t use contactless cards in Melbourne when London introduced the technology in 2014. So that’s 10 years ago.
And I did get an answer, ‘we’re working on it and hope to introduce it soon.’ Which in Melbourne seems to be in 10 years time. So for over 10 years I’ve been able to use my Australian ANZ credit card to pay for public transport in London, England. But not in Melbourne, Australia. Absurd isn’t it?
Once upon a time Melbourne was a regular ‘most liveable city in the world’ title holder. How could you be a ‘most liveable city’ and at the same time operate the world’s most-visitor-unfriendly-travel-card? I suggested that in 2013 and 13 years later my opinion hasn’t changed. Never mind, the new Metro Tunnel Line reportedly took lots of lessons from London’s very popular Elizabeth Line. In London I often use the Elizabeth Line even if it means travelling a bit further because it’s so fast and convenient. Perhaps Melbourne can also learn from London how to get rid of the Myki Card.
▲ The Elizabeth Line at Bond St.in London
Since it opened in 2022 the Elizabeth Line quickly became the busiest railway line in the UK although technically it’s not part of the London Underground network. It runs out to Heathrow Airport – but so does the Piccadilly Line – and even further to Reading. It’s popular and has won architectural awards as well as being so busy. Check my August 2024 posting about riding the London Tube.
At Burma's Inle Lake tourists flock to the ‘Jumping Cat Monastery.’ As a break from meditating the monks trained their cats to jump through hoops, which turned Nga Hpe Kyaung into the most popular monastery on the lake. The monks seem quite relaxed about it although i...
There are good airports, bad airports and plain silly airports. Mandalay International Airport in Burma certainly qualifies in the third category. Mandalay used to have a handy little airport close to the town. Today it’s a 45km drive south to reach Mandalay Internati...
Burma is so tightly packed with Buddhist sites – brand new ones as well as the ancient ones – and visitor numbers are still so comparatively low that it’s easy to stumble upon something new every time you visit. This trip Maureen and I ventured south-west of Mandalay ...
We all know about the Great Firewall of China, how about the lesser known Firewall of Burma? We’ve taken a lot of criticism at Lonely Planet for publishing a guidebook to the country, officially known as Myanmar today. We published the first edition of our Burma guide...
I was in Haiti in 2007, less than two years before the disastrous earthquake hit the Caribbean Island. Back in 1998 I was on another island that’s recently suffered earthquake damage, Chile’s Robinson Crusoe Island. Eight people on the island are known to have lost th...
I was in Bali from 15 to 20 February, Maureen was having an important birthday and we’d convened a family get together in Ubud to celebrate. We were paying for it so during our visit there were assorted ATM withdrawals, nine charges to my Visa credit card and two to...
Public transport smartcard systems are all the go. All over the world cities are rolling out computerised transport tickets which allow commuters to use one card to access multiple forms of public transport. For the transport operator it means efficiencies, for the tr...
Travelling around Libya it struck me that Muammar al-Gaddafi was the Michael Jackson of dictators, always keen on appearing in fancy dress. He has just reinforced his whacky reputation by declaring a jihad on Switzerland and suggesting that Muslim nations should ban ...
Flights that get diverted and end up somewhere unintended are always a pain in the neck. I’ve had a few over the years including one last year – it was my very first flight on a double-decker Airbus A380 and Qantas managed to take me from Los Angeles to Sydney instead...
At the Jaipur Literary Festival in India last month I heard John Kampfner speak about his book Freedom for Sale, subtitled ‘how we made money and lost our liberty.’ The book takes eight countries – Singapore, China, Russia, the UAE, India, Italy, Britain and the USA –...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013