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.
I’ve recorded several podcasts, interviews, conversations recently.
At London Business School Maureen and I recorded Journeys, a conversation with Rajesh Chandy the Professor of Entrepreneurship in the Developing World at the Wheeler Institute. People seemed to enjoy it, someone suggested that we ‘looked like two teenagers our to start an exciting adventure,’ not business like at all.
With Tyrel Cameron Eskelson I talked on his Interlocutor podcast about my travel life, starting in Pakistan when I was a small child right up to travel in recent weeks and for the rest of 2025.
Maureen and I made a quick trip to the southern Australian city of Adelaide to catch Neil Armfield’s operatic take on Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the Robert Lepage production of The Far Side of the Moon along with assorted other art and events at the Adelaide Arts Festiv...
A large chunk of my life in Melbourne, Australia was spent in Richmond. Maureen and I lived in a rented house in Richmond from 1976, then bought it for A$20,500 in 1980, renovated it and lived in it until 1988 when we sold it for $144,000. At that time it was the high...
▲ Me and a Tesla Model S – promoting Lonely Planet’s Epic Drives – in Wales. I don’t have a Tesla in my garage in Australia – if the Tesla Model S was just a little bit smaller I probably would have one, but it was a real squeeze fitting one in and I could see I’d hav...
The story line in The Abu Dhabi Bar Mitzvah is straightforward – Adam Levinson scores a job as program coordinator for New York University’s Abu Dhabi campus and uses his time in that UAE capital as a springboard to explore the region – Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq,...
Donald Trump may be fiercely against global trade (unless it’s all-American global trade), but he certainly does wonders for world trade in the T-shirt business. Now I don’t believe in buying T-shirts, they’re something you get free with the donor’s trademark, name...
On January 18, the MV Butiraoi, a 17.5 metre catamaran ferry with 50 people on board set out from the Kiribati island of Nonouti on a two-day, 240km trip to the main island of the nation, South Tarawa. It never arrived and a New Zealand Air Force Orion aircraft has be...
Melbourne – Australia’s second largest city – is noted for its street art, there are laneways in the city centre with a constant procession of photographers documenting the art. Lou Chamberlin’s Burn City book is particularly good for dramatic large scale portraiture,...
I’ve always been a bit of a petrol head and Dan Gurney, who died at the age of 86 on Sunday 14 January, was my favourite ever racing car driver. After winning the 24 hour race at Le Mans in 1967 he invented the now customary practice of spraying champagne over the ent...
Like much of humanity I’m disappointed if a day goes by without another incident of the US President Donald Trump opening his mouth and seeing how far he can get his foot into it. Last week it was his ‘shitholes’ outburst and, predictably, a dozen different shithole T...
Journey - An Illustrated History of Travel from Dorling Kindersley bills itself as ‘a must for every armchair traveller’ although it probably needs a warning that you’re going to need a big armchair. It is a substantial tome. Moving through section by section from ...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013