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.
Melbourne-based photographer Tess Rice’s expansive photographic book perfectly captures that amazing Indian city and the city’s presiding deity, Kali, the Goddess of Death and Destruction who also represents energy, fertility and creativity. I’ve been back to Kolka...
Locked down – trapped even – in Australia during the pandemic I have been travelling in words at least. I’ve written one whole – little – book for the Spanish publisher GeoPlaneta about why we travel and what travel might be like after the pandemic. No I didn’t write ...
A review in The Economist alerted me to Gavin Francis’s wonderful Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession and then I remembered I’d met Gavin when we were both judges on the Warwick Prize for Writing from Warwick University back in 2015. His book drops in on a wide ass...
I’ve been involved in various pandemic projects including contributing to BWB Texts in New Zealand’s 100% Pure Future – New Zealand Tourism Renewed. The publisher’s summary: • Covid-19 has had a devastating effect on New Zealand tourism, but the industry was alre...
So when did you last fly in a Boeing 707 Simon Calder asked me last month, since 3 January 2021 was the 40th anniversary of Pan Am retiring their last 707. They placed the first order for that pioneering aircraft back in 1955, so almost 70 years ago. ▲ A Boeing 707...
We’re currently having another virus scare in Australia. On 23 December I looked at the Northern Beaches outbreak in Sydney, possibly arriving via US airline crew. That’s prompted a border closure between New South Wales (Sydney) and Victoria (Melbourne). One of th...
I’ve been to Zanzibar – the island just off the coast of Tanzania – twice. Once before I joined a group of friends to climb Mt Kilimanjaro (Africa’s highest mountain) and once when I spent two week on my bicycle riding from Iringa in Tanzania to Lilongwe in Malawi. Th...
▲ Robert Powell in Kathmandu in 1999 with a painting of a house front in Mustang. The Australian architect-artist died just before Christmas – on 16 December. The Nepali Times underlined his importance to the Himalayan region in a lengthy obituary written by Linda Ke...
Australia has sailed through the coronavirus pandemic remarkably well despite a short and sharp outbreak in Melbourne (where I live) and the state of Victoria. I looked at just how bad the Melbourne figures were back on 22 August 2020 and then I looked at what it was ...
Lots of countries are working hard to encourage electric cars – Norway probably top of the list, the government intends that all cars sold in Norway will be electric by 2025 and they’re already well on the way to that target. Visiting Hong Kong in 2016 I was impressed...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013