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.
▲ Last night Edward Snowden talked to a large audience at the Melbourne Convention Centre via video link from Moscow. He was interviewed by Julian Morrow from the satirical team The Chaser. We got to pose questions to Mr Snowden and the one top on my list was wheth...
A couple of years ago I blogged about the disappearance of postcards in our Instagram and email age. Well two years later I’m still regularly sending postcards to my last two card recipients: my 91 year old mother and Maureen’s 94 year old Aunt Kate. In that last blog...
I’m a sucker for FlightRadar24, that app that lets you track aircraft all over the world or identify whatever might be flying above you right now. Well not quite all over the world, I’ve noted before that flights between the Middle East and Australia tend to disapp...
A former Lonely Planet author Leif Pettersen worked on the Lonely Planet Romania guidebook and it’s pretty clear Count Dracula got his fangs in to Leif at some point. Backpacking with Dracula, available on Amazon as an ebook, supplies way more information on Transylva...
Melaleuca is the starting or finishing point for the South Coast Track, the access point (if you don’t come by boat) to Bathurst Harbour and it was also the arrival and departure point for my recent visit to the Southwest. It’s also ground zero for the Deny King st...
The ‘getting there is half the fun’ line certainly applied to my recent trip to Southwest Tasmania. In both direction. We flew down from Hobart – departing from the smaller Cambridge Airport, just a km or so away from Hobart’s main airport – on a Par Avion Britten Nor...
The Tasmanian Southwest Park is about as remote as you can get in Tasmania. The 84km South Coast Track runs from Cockle Creek, accessible by road at the eastern end of the park, to the airstrip at Melaleuca on an inlet from Bathurst Harbour in the west. Most walkers w...
In 1975, as the military dictatorship in Portugal crumbled and their colonies in Africa (Angola and Mozambique) and Southeast Asia (Portuguese Timor) were cut loose the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński turned up in Luanda and spent the next three months watching ...
Although my recent visit to Guatemala – wearing my Global Heritage Fund archaeology hat – was principally to see the remote jungle site of El Mirador I also went back to Tikal, which I last visited way back in 1998. It’s a big contrast to El Mirador – no helicopter or...
My recent travels in Central America (Panama) and the Caribbean (Cuba) started with a visit to Guatemala. Wearing my Global Heritage Fund archaeology hat I flew by helicopter to El Mirador, the remote Mayan site south of Flores and Tikal and close to the border with M...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013