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.
The Australian state of Victoria has suffered an awful lot of lockdowns since the coronavirus pandemic kicked off. I’ve managed to miss the most recent batch, I escaped the state just before Lockdown 5 kicked off and Lockdown 6 is ongoing. One of the things you sho...
So why did I never hear about this book before? Peter Pinney set out to travel after WW II, he’d spent the last spell of the war in Bougainville, that island off to the south-east corner of Papua New Guinea heading towards the Solomon Islands, where it really belongs....
On 17 August I posted about what was currently happening in the skies over Afghanistan. Nothing civil I said, airlines – which often used to fly over Afghanistan between Europe and further east in Asia – were all diverting. The activity was purely military. It’s the s...
Officially Qantas is flying pretty much nowhere. Domestic flights had got back almost to normal until current outbreaks and lockdowns emptied the departure and arrival boards. The Sydney-Melbourne route was one of the busiest in the world, it certainly isn’t at the mo...
The Fridays are a UK bicycle riding ‘club’ who organize bike rides, short and long, often riding at night. Back in 2010 I joined their signature Friday night ride from London to Brighton – midnight at Sloane Square in Chelsea, breakfast at dawn 100km (63 miles) away a...
It’s been a year for climbing peaks. Back in April I finally got around to climbing Mt Kosciuszko, Australia’s highest peak. And now I’ve climbed Mt Marble Arch. Someone had the clever idea that building an artificial 25metre high ‘peak’ beside Marble Arch – at the ju...
I can’t remember what led me to The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay – it might have been a mention in The New York Review of Books. Indeed they published a reprint of the book in 2003 and although, like all the other editions, it seems to be out of print you can ...
Despite the pandemic’s restrictions on my travels – I’ve made a few trips around Australia, but I haven’t been overseas for over a year – I have been busy travelling on paper (and digitally) at least. Most recently that’s been by writing a foreword for Why Travel? – U...
Struggletown, Janet McCalman’s award winning classic study of ‘Public & Private Life in Richmond 1900–1965’ has recently come out in a new edition from Melbourne University Press: • 'The old Struggletowners, if they could see it now, would not believe their...
Living right on the Yarra River in Melbourne – or close to it over the years – I’m very aware of its varied moods. Most of the time it’s flowing very slowly by the time it gets to me. I’m always surprised, a few km upriver, how it’s always flowing rapidly as it comes ...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013