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.
One of the remarkable things about our world today is that so often people in the street – you and I – seem to be so much smarter than the politicians who govern us. There’s no way we can ignore the effects of climate change, but it seems to take a teenager like Greta...
Of course I posted on my travels throughout the year, including on Vanuatu, Sumba Island in Indonesia, assorted Australia trips like the Torres Strait Islands, Armenia, fjord travel in Norway and Svalbard and polar bears in Norway, the wonderful mosaics of Ravenna in ...
Want to fly down to Adelaide, spend three days on a new luxury train service to Brisbane, fly back home to Melbourne and write a story about it the man from the Daily Telegraph in London enquired? Sure, why not I agreed, although I was somewhat puzzled that they knew ...
For some inexplicable reason I’ve visited most island nations in the Pacific – and the assorted French colonies – but never Vanuatu despite its proximity to Australia. I fixed that omission last month with a week on two of the islands – Espiritu Santo and Tanna. ▲ ...
Why have I never been to the Indonesian island of Sumba? The islands of Nusa Tenggara run in a chain to the east of Bali – Lombok, then Sumbawa, the Komodo Islands, Flores and finally Timor. In the middle Sumba is centred just to the south of Sumbawa-Komodo-Flores. Ov...
My new book from the National Library of Australia – Tony Wheeler’s Islands of Australia – features a section on the islands of Torres Strait, the 274 islands that dot the shallow strait which separates Cape York (the northern tip of the state of Queensland) from Papu...
Our Norway fjord trip – Part 1 and Part 2 – was preceded by a train ride from Oslo to Bergen and a short stay in Bergen and concluded with a visit to Stavanger, the oil capital of oil-wealthy Norway. ▲ The Bergensbanen is regularly cited as one of the world’s great...
With a group of friends we travelled Norwegian fjords around Bergen and Stavenger – I posted Part 1 a couple of days ago. ▲ Now I’m on to Part 2 including the old hydro power station at Flørli on Lysefjord. The building houses one remaining power turbine and statio...
It was my second trip to Norway this year. Visit 1 took me up to Svalbard, way north of the Arctic Circle, and to Svalbard’s intriguingly named capital city Longyearbyen. It also led to a cover story on the Australian Financial Review’s quarterly Sophisticated Travell...
There’s a fascination about abandoned places and I’ve certainly visited a few of them over the years. Henk Van Rensbergen has made a life out of seeking out some of the world’s stranger – and more photogenic – abandoned places. When he’s not flying 787s for the Dutch ...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013