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.
Chinggis KhaanYou can't get away from Chinggis Khaan (aka Genghis Khan in the west) and our first encounter with the most famous Mongolian was right in the centre of Ulaanbaatar where this very imposing new statue looks across Sükhabaatar Square from the very glo...
Bad Lands – my account of travels along George Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ (Iran, Iraq and North Korea) plus six other assorted ‘interesting’ nations (Afghanistan, Albania, Burma, Cuba, Libya and Saudi Arabia) is available from Lonely Pla...
My first view of Mt Kilimanjaro, flying in to Dar es Salaam on a British Airways 767 out of London. It was great to see the snow-capped volcano cone poking through the top of the clouds. Two weeks later, I'd made it to the top of Afric...
I had eight days to kill before meeting up with my Kilimanjaro friends so I spent four days on Zanzibar Island (now there’s another of those ‘want to go there’ travel names) and four days on safari in Lake Manyara National Park, the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater...
I spent most of May and June travelling for business, talking about my new books Bad Lands and Unlikely Destinations. Now I'm back on the road in Africa, I'm writing this from a hotel in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. This morning I had this view of Mt Kilimanjaro, Africa's...
Maureen and I are travelling around the USA promoting Unlikely Destinations, the Lonely Planet story, and my new 'Axis of Evil travel book' Bad Lands. On Monday July 18 I'll be speaking at Powell's bookshop in Portland, Oregon and everyday this week I'll be posting a ...
CROCODILES OF UNUSUAL SIZE This is crocodile country and visitors get plenty of opportunity to contemplate the ‘this could happen to you’ warning signs. And every year it does seem to happen to somebody who doesn’t take enough care. Our prime crocodile experiences: ...
Maureen and I arrived in Australia in December 1972 at Exmouth on the North-West Cape, off a yacht sailing from Bali. In May 2007 I returned to Exmouth to dive with the whale sharks. Rhincondon typus is the world’s biggest shark, whale size in fact. They’re also harml...
Here I Sat (or squatted) Pictures of hotel rooms often show the luxurious bed, the stylish furniture or the stunning view out the window. Or alternatively the lumpy bed, the crumbling furniture and a close up view of an adjacent wall. Either way that important seco...
On Friday 2 February Maureen and I will be departing England in a beat up old Mitsubishi to drive the Plymouth-Dakar. You read that right, ‘Plymouth’ not Paris. So it doesn’t start in Paris, and to be honest it doesn’t end in Dakar in Senegal either, it continues on...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013