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.
Wearing my Global Heritage Fund archaeology hat I visited a very modern archaeology site in Havana, the National School of Arts in Marianao. Here’s the rather flower power School of Fine Arts at the complex. ▼ Soon after the revolution Fidel and Che were out playing ...
On my last trip to Cuba in 2014 I was delighted to note that the old American cars seemed to be looking better than ever. Many of them resplendent in pastel shades that never featured on the Detroit colour charts back in their era. ▲ Two years later there’s no chan...
When I visited Cuba in 2014 Ernest Hemingway’s hideaway, Finca la Vigia, the Museo Hemingway wasn’t open. Somebody was making a film. ▲ Hemingway’s study It was certainly open this trip and this major Havana attraction was very popular. The house is a delight an...
Internet connections are strange in Cuba, it’s one of the things that is going to change rapidly if Cuba really does open up after Obama’s visit. At the moment you’re not going to find Wi-Fi in your hotel room or in casa particulares – the Cuban B&Bs which are ...
After my 16 March Brunei posting I’ve been travelling a lot – London, Guatemala, Cuba, Panama, New York – and then back to Australia. So a bunch of rather late postings (and in no particular order) over the next week or two. Starting with Cuba, where I turned up soon ...
Maureen and I visited Bandar Seri Begawan – BSB to its friends – back in 1974 when we were working on the very first edition of Lonely Planet’s South-East Asia on a Shoestring. From Singapore we travelled across to North Borneo – the Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sa...
Last year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl – The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster is exactly what its title indicates, a series of monologues about the Chernobyl meltdown. Human error (a foolish shutdown ...
The Sultan of Brunei, intent on underlining his South-East Asia nation’s Ruritanian image, decided his 2015 gift to the Christmas media silly season would be banning Christmas.Well it’s not Islamic is it? Santa Claus and Christmas trees aren’t exactly religious images...
◄ Cycling trips, walking trips, boat trips, they all seem to fire the travel writing imagination. Sadly the means of travel we probably use more than any other for longer trips – flying – doesn’t seem to do it. Oh yes, there are some great flying books , like Alexande...
The Melbourne Arts Centre is just across the Yarra River from the centre of the city of Melbourne. It features a number of theatre and concert spaces, most of it subterranean. It’s a popular joke that Australia has the world’s best opera house – the outside in Sydney,...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013