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.
In early November 2017 – just six months ago – I went to the Irrawaddy Writers Festival in Mandalay, Myanmar. And got castigated for swanning around in Burma when the country was guilty of war crimes, genocide in the Rakhine region, chasing half a million of their Roh...
The final stop in my three country Europe circuit was Pristina (or Prishtina) in Kosovo. If Macedonia is partly defined by opposition from Greece (they don’t like the name), then Kosovo’s problem neighbour is Serbia (they think Kosovo should be part of Serbia). I trav...
▲ Stop two on my recent ‘continental European countries I haven’t been to’ excursion was Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. Skopje has two memorable facts, one is the terrible earthquake that totally devastated the city in 1963. On the front of the ruins of the old tra...
There are only a handful (four in fact) of countries in continental Europe I’ve never visited and with a week to spare in late March I set out to visit three of them, starting with Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. In fact I’ve been to Czechoslovakia when it includ...
Let’s be honest, Eritrea is not going down as one of my favourite destinations. I’m often surprised by the places from which I depart thinking ‘well that was interesting.’ The Ukraine, Kiev and Chernobyl a couple of years ago. Panama – with the canal, birdwatching, Pa...
Eritrea won’t go down as my favourite recent travel destination, I found the capital Asmara disappointingly quiet and subdued. You could multiply that by 10 for Massawa, the semi-deserted Red Sea port. Nevertheless my final Eritrean destination, the ancient Aksumite c...
It was the ‘Pearl of the Red Sea’ so a trip to the principal Eritrean port from Asmara, the capital, seemed like a good idea. I turned up at the bus station and waited – and waited some more. There was absolutely no indication when buses arrived or left and where to g...
◄ At the House of Illustration – 2 Granary Square, King’s Cross – behind King’s Cross Station in London, England, there’s an exhibit of Graphic Design from North Korea: Made in North Korea: Everyday Graphics from the DPRK. The exhibit is open until 13 May. The exhi...
Earlier in March I visited Eritrea and its World Heritage capital Asmara. Architects frequently describe it as Africa’s secret modernist city, but futurism, rationalism and assorted other architectural buzzwords have also been applied. It’s all a result of its period ...
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...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013