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 took Queensland Rail’s Spirit of the Outback train from Brisbane to Longreach. It’s 600km north along the coast from Brisbane to Rockhampton then 700km due west inland and into the outback. That’s 1325km in total, which takes almost 26 hours. That means an average...
My travels north from Melbourne took me through Brisbane three times. ▲ The first time as we descended into Brisbane there were wonderfully clear views of Surfers Paradise and the Gold Coast off to the east. I’d fortuitously chosen the appropriate side of the plane...
My recent Australian travels started with the ascent of Mt Kosciuszko (Australia’s highest peak) and continued north to Canberra (the nation’s capital), Sydney and the Hawkesbury River. Before venturing in to the northern state of Queensland there was an unexpected vi...
The Hawkesbury River flows into the Pacific just north of Sydney, driving between Sydney and Newcastle the highway crosses the river close to its mouth. It’s a popular Sydney getaway for bushwalking, boating on the river and dining at restaurants like Peats Bite or th...
It’s Australia’s capital city, strategically sited between the two big cities – Sydney and Melbourne – so it doesn’t upset either of them. Like Washington DC and assorted other capitals it was planned that way, it’s not a city like Paris or London where its role as a ...
Since I’m currently obeying the rules which ban departures from Australia there’s been no international travel in my diary for the past 12 months. I have been travelling around Australia, however, and I covered a little walk up Mt Kosciuszko – Climbing Mt Kosciuszko t...
I’d only been to Thredbo, the popular NSW ski resort once before. When Maureen and I lived in Sydney back in 1973, so almost 50 years ago, we drove to Thredbo, via Melbourne, to go skiing. And I’d never climbed Mt Kosciuszko, the highest mountain in Australia, so it w...
The pandemic in the west is generally accepted to have started on 11 March 2020 – it’s when the USA lowered the boom on international visitors and a few days before I had to scurry home from Socotra in Yemen. So today we’re well over a year into this damned thing and ...
Geoff Crowther (15 March 1944-13 April 2021) died last week. Geoff played a key role in the early years of Lonely Planet, he wrote the first editions of Africa on a Shoestring (originally Africa on the Cheap), South America on a Shoestring and with Prakash A Raj and m...
I have really not gone places for over a year now – 16 March 2020 I was on the island of Socotra in Yemen. Then I flew via Aden in Yemen to Cairo, spent a night there and continued via Abu Dhabi in the UAE to Melbourne. Where I had to go into ‘self isolation’ f...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013