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.
My visit to Kiribati featured North and South Tarawa, but it was was too short to explore any of the outer islands, you’d have to at least overnight and flights don’t operate every day. Plus you’d have to allow extra time, just in case weather or Air Kiribati malfunct...
▲ Having looked around crowded South Tarawa it was time to move to uncrowded North Tarawa. The road that runs from one end of South Tarawa (Betio) all the way to the other end (the airport at Bairiki) continues a bit further and then crosses a bridge to Buota, the fir...
In the British colonial era it was the Gilbert half of the Gilbert & Ellice Islands. Kiribati gained its independence in 1979, became a member of the United Nations in 1999 and has a population of 115,000. Over 50,000 of that population are crammed on to the strin...
I’ve just been at the Irrawaddy Literary Festival in Myanmar. I put a lot of thought into it before I went, assorted people told me I should not be going, that by turning up I was ignoring the ethnic cleansing or even genocide going on in the Rakhine area, the western...
Lonely Planet’s second Cities Book is about to hit the shelves. In the first edition, I came up with Ten Cities that Didn’t Make the Cut. Cities that for an assortment of reasons I found really important, interesting or inspiring, but didn’t feature in the book. Some ...
For all Trump’s bleating about trade agreements hitting American business the USA has some blatantly unfair trade restrictions which not only hit other countries’ businesses, but also damage the very country they’re supposed to protect, ie the USA. Starting with the J...
A recent news.com story underlined why it’s not nice to have SSSS stamped on your boarding pass in the USA. It means you’ve been lined up for Secondary Security Screening Selection and getting shuffled into ‘Secondary’ in the US is often not a pleasant procedure. At t...
Donald Trump’s announcement that he would like to decertify the Iran nuclear deal – if it really happens and that is far from certain – could reimpose sanctions on Iran. Which conceivably could stall Iran Air’s aircraft orders. When the sanctions were shelved Iran Air...
There’s absolutely no shortage of books about North Korea, I’ve even tackled the subject myself in my book Bad Lands. Donald Trump’s recent forays into the topic, with his less than successful verbal assault on the country’s ‘Rocket Man,’ only focused even more attent...
I had the pleasure on Tuesday night of launching the new Graeme Simsion and Anne Buist novel Two Steps Forward. In alternating chapter as Martin (recently divorced English engineer) and Zoe (recently widowed Californian artist) they set out to walk the Camino Santiago...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013