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.
Part 1 of our Cadillac coast-to-coast Odyssey carried us from San Francisco via Death Valley, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Flagstaff, Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, Amarillo, Little Rock, Memphis, Nashville, Philadelphia and finally ended up at Concord, just outside Boston...
We head up the New Jersey Turnpike, skirt around New York City, which is completely enshrouded in an evil cloud of brown smog which would embarrass a Los Angeleno, and head north into New England. There’s one final pause just five miles before Tom Brosnahan’s place in...
Travelling with kids is all give and take, we’ll do this, then you can do that. So we start the day by backtracking to Hershey to visit the Hershey chocolate factory. I love factory tours - how does this get made? how are cars made differently in Hiroshima versus Detr...
The weather, uniformly beautiful from San Francisco as far as Little Rock has been distinctly changeable ever since. We wake up in sleepy Bedford to pouring rain and it continues, on and off for most of the day. Our Californian Cadillac rightly takes exception to this...
Today we manage our most comprehensive get-lost-exercise since our exit from Las Vegas two weeks ago. From West Virginia we go into Pennsylvania, intent on visiting Falling Water, Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous house. Unfortunately the house, the nearby towns and ev...
Another long drive day, through Tennessee and Kentucky into West Virginia. The Kentucky stretch is a real international tour - in short order we pass exits to Boston, New Haven, Paris, Versailles, Somerset, Winchester, Lebanon, Glasgow and even Danville, the very firs...
The Graceland hype is so overpowering it was kind of surprising to find two other attractions (one very low key and one very big budget) which we ranked ahead of the Presley extravaganza. The low key one was Sun Studios, where Elvis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Jerr...
What a little town Little Rock is. By lunchtime we’re in Memphis and then head for Graceland. The Graceland leaflet warning that it can be hard to find, despite its proximity to the city, turns out to be correct, we end up at the airport, on three different freeways h...
We expect this day to be the longest of the trip but the previous long day plus the time change results in a late start. First we drive just west of Amarillo to the Cadillac Ranch where a line of Caddys from the 50s and 60s are ‘planted’ in a field. their tailfins poi...
First it’s underground to walk the blue trail in the Carlsbad Caverns. It’s easy to suffer limestone cave overkill, one stalagmite looks much like another, they all get dubbed with funny names and after a dozen or so the average non-enthusiast has probably had enough ...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013