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.
Maureen and I spent a week on the National Geographic Explorer on a Lindblad National Geographic trip around the Svalbard islands. Look directly down on the north pole on a globe and it’s easy to see Svalbard is in the far north, way far north. At around 76 to 80°N it...
I stayed at the interesting Old Clare Hotel in the Sydney central suburb of Chippendale during the recent Sydney Writers Festival. That’s easy walking distance from Central Station, the main Sydney railway station and connected directly to Sydney Airport. ▲ A short...
Out on the streets in big cities around the world you'll find homeless people selling the Big Issue magazine. Well this week in Australia I'm with them, the current edition features my article A Life Best Travelled - including Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, enc...
I've just posted about exhibitions in England, but there's plenty on in Australia as well.▲ 60s psychedelia At the Melbourne Museum the swinging '60s exhibit Revolution: Records & Rebels runs until 25 August. It’s a reshowing of the London Victoria & Albert...
There are lots of interesting exhibits at London galleries and museums this summer including the terrific Stanley Kubrick exhibit at the Design Museum in Kensington (open until 15 September 2019). ◄ You’re greeted with this bright orange Probe 16 which featured in ...
I flew on the non-stop Qantas flight from Australia to England, Perth. It took 16 hours 47 minutes, slightly faster than scheduled and although it’s not the longest non-stop flight it’s certainly right up there. Qatar’s Doha-Auckland is slightly longer and Singapore A...
Lake Eyre is in flood, it happens when huge rains – like from Cyclone Trevor in Queensland in early 2019 – the water heads south-west towards the vast salt lake. Click here for the weather bureau’s story on this year’s floods. I wrote about the process in 2017, writin...
▲ A FlightRadar24 snapshot of the air traffic over Iraq and Iran on 23 May 2019. For a time Iraq was looked upon as being unsafe and everything went over Iran. Today airlines fly over both countries, but not much is going over Afghanistan in the image above, not becau...
In fact Diccon Bewes claims to have just taken one slow train on his Swiss jaunt (in fact there were quite a few) while Tom Chesshyre happily confesses to riding lots of them on his oh-why-are-we-doing this pre-Brexit tour of Europe. Not all of Tom Chesshyre’s trai...
American photographer Taryn Simon spent a week at New York City’s Kennedy Airport photographing items confiscated from arriving passengers or at the post office where arriving mail is inspected. Contraband uses 1075 of those photographs and having done a circuit of No...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013