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.
I’m heading straight to Herat because I’ve got to fly there and back and don’t want to risk getting stuck at the end of the trip. All the road routes are either downright dangerous (ie via Kandahar) or difficult and possibly dangerous (ie via Mazar-i-Sharif or straigh...
My flight from Dubai is pretty much on time, despite the rumours about cancelled flights and the tales that UN staff are not allowed to fly Kam Air. Big deal, a US embassy guy I found myself next to in the check in line told me they weren’t allowed to fly Ariana Afgha...
Yesterday it was communist dictator Enver Hoxha's museum, today it's a kid's slide I’m kicking around Europe’s last forgotten corner. Communism finally collapsed in this tiny country a couple of years after it had fallen apart in the rest of Europe. E...
Iraq Practicalities You would have to be crazy to visit central or southern Iraq and even the north is not for beginners but if you did want to go, here’s how to do it: Visas Officially any visitor to Iraq needs a visa and they are not available on arrival, even ...
Blogging Across Iraq I’m in Iraq. No, this is not some sort of ‘dangerous places’ mission, the south and centre of the country may be war zones but the north, the Kurdistan region of Iraq is, so I’m told, quite peaceful. Not at all like the rest of the country. The f...
Cashing a Travellers Cheque Ever wondered why travellers cheques are dying out? I’ve been carrying my last four American Express US$100 TCs round for several years now without ever finding a reason to cash them. Observing a Nepalese friend trying to cash one in Melbo...
13-16 March - Earthquake Zone The 7.8 on the Richter Scale earthquake which hit north-eastern Pakistan on 8 October last year killed 73,000 people, damaged or destroyed 80% of the buildings in large parts of the zone and left three million people homeless. The Lo...
Phuket – Hotel Wildlife, Hotel Guests & Scuba Diving I joked in Once While Travelling about the ‘hotel wildlife’ I’ve encountered over the years – the rats, mice and cockroaches which shoestring travel in the developing world sometimes bring you face to face with...
I’ve watched 747s being put together in Seattle, Mazdas roll down the assembly line in Hiroshima and seen far too much beer in production, so when I was in the English midlands I decided to drop in on the Mini production line just outside Oxford. Maureen and I have on...
PSB, the publisher of Lonely Planet guides in French, awarded their ‘2006 Bourse Lonely Planet’ in Paris in late February and I was their to help judge the winner. Bourse translates more-or-less as ‘grant’ in the British university scholarship sense. The ‘Bourse L...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013