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.
Travel almost always brings up some sort of money stories and my recent journey through Uganda, Somaliland and Djibouti certainly did. Somaliland Money Troubles The problem with money and Somaliland is it gets confused with Somalia and for all the standard banking...
Somaliland to Djibouti So how do you get from Somaliland to Djibouti? Check Travel Scanner or Google Flights and you will be told the only way is via Ethiopia with Ethiopian Airlines. In fact you can fly direct in about 40 minutes with Air Djibouti – the Red Sea Airl...
If chaotic Somalia is Italian Somalia and reasonably together Somaliland is British Somalia then Djibouti is French Somalia. It was known as French Somaliland, but between 1967 and 1977, when it became independent and joined the UN, it became the French Territory of t...
My Somaliland travels started in the capital Hargeisa and I returned there between excursions which started with Las Geel, easily the country’s major tourist attraction. If Somaliland had more than a handful of tourists that is. ◄ The Las Geel turn-off is about 50k...
Don’t confuse Somaliland with Somalia. Once upon a time the horn of Africa, that sharp elbow pointing east below the Arabian Peninsula, was all Somalia with France, Britain and Italy maintaining colonies. The French bit to the north was French Somaliland and now is th...
Gorillas may be the big Uganda wildlife, the creatures everybody wants to meet, but there was certainly lots more to be seen. Plus I ticked off the African Big 5 – lions, leopards, rhinos, elephants and African buffaloes – during my visit. ▲ chimpanzee Riupwe not s...
Funny how you can go in half a dozen short steps from the Booker Prize to Zimbabwe to Cecil Rhodes to Joshua Nkomo to Robert Mugabe to North Korea to Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan. Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawayo’s new novel Glory has been longlisted for the 2022 Book...
Uganda may not have the big name attraction – ie really well known wildlife parks – that you find in other African countries, South Africa, Botswana, Kenya or Tanzania for example. But it does have gorillas. The other big name gorilla country is Rwanda, but when it co...
2022 has already been my year of Africa, I was amazed by Chad in February and in July I visited Uganda, Somaliland and Djibouti. Let’s start with Uganda, I’ve been to Kenya and Tanzania – the other two countries which formed the British colonial era East African tr...
Dervla Murphy cycled away – aged 90 – on 22 May. Her death ends an astonishing travel career, kicking off with what is still probably the best book ever written about a great bicycle ride: Full Tilt, her 1963 trip from Ireland to India. I wrote about where you could f...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013