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.
Earlier today – Sunday 2 August – Daniel Andrews, the State Premier of the Australian State of Victoria (that covers where I live in Melbourne), announced that Victoria was a ‘State of Disaster’ and as a result our Covid-19 lockdown has been amplified. Apart from wear...
Trump, the world’s favourite president, announces that Australia has ‘tremendous problems,’ here’s the story in the Sydney Morning Herald. "This resurgence in cases is occurring throughout large portions of our planet — in Japan, China, Australia, Belgium, Spain, F...
In the 1920s J R Ackerley – who later enjoyed two decades as the literary editor of the BBC magazine The Listener – took a Hindoo Holiday in Chhokrapur in central India as personal secretary to the Maharajah. The publisher’s synopsis notes that he ‘recorded the Mahara...
The New York Times had a story on Arizona’s Covid-19 story, which is effectively ‘a large-scale version of a clinical trial.’ Like assorted other states Arizona opened up too early, the cases, the hospitalisations and the deaths have shot through the roof, but now the...
Fairly early on in the pandemic it became clear that something weird was going on in the Arab Gulf State. And in Singapore. ▲ Singapore old and new, the Merlion and Marina Bay Sands with its ‘swimming pool across three towers.’ These countries have large ‘guestw...
Like many people these days I spend far too much time analyzing the Covid-19 figures and reading articles on the pandemic. Despite all the learned analysis I keep thinking ‘why haven’t I read anything about this’ so for a week I’m going to note my thoughts about some ...
There are a dozen countries where Covid-19 has yet to arrive, places where there have been zero Covid-19 cases and, therefore, zero Covid-19 deaths? Really? ◄ Given how much bad press the island group gets I was surprised how much I enjoyed my visit to Kiribati. It...
Like many people these days I spend far too much time analyzing the Covid-19 figures and reading articles on the pandemic. Despite all the learned analysis I keep thinking ‘why haven’t I read anything about this’ so for a week I’m going to note my thoughts about some ...
I spend lots of time – like lots of other people – looking at the coronavirus numbers, graphs, projections and analyses. Of course we pay most attention to our own backyard – what’s happening in Europe, in North America or, for me, in Australia and then looking jealou...
Amy Gillett was an Australian athlete – she rowed for Australia in the 1996 Olympics in the USA before switching to cycling. She was tragically killed in a training accident in Germany in 2005. Named after her the Amy Gillett foundation works for cycling safety in Aus...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013