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.
Mumbai or Bombay it’s always good to revisit the business (and Bollywood) capital of India. A wander around central Mumbai took me past plenty of interesting architecture, like the art-deco Eros Cinema. ► St Thomas Cathedral has an extensive collection of British m...
Fifty of them through the year – well some of them rented houses, a villa in Bali, an old mansion house in Transylvania. Lots of them just for a night, but a number for a week. Plus two boats (Sea Cloud II in the Mediterranean, Katharina around the Komodo Islands). No...
Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is a clever project. From the cover it’s yet another self-help manual, although with a racy title. Inside the chapters are arranged just like a self-help book should be, running through from ‘Move to the City,’ via ...
I made a brief visit to Madrid in 2015 to speak at a ‘Future of Travel’ conference put on by The Economist. I’ll remember the visit particularly for how cold and wet it was. The few days I’d had in London before I arrived in Madrid were much more comfortable. I didn’t...
▲ My 2015 travels also took me back to Yogyakarta, Indonesia’s ‘cultural capital.’ Yogya painter Affandi ‘s home has been turned into a museum and art gallery, his exotically customised Mitsubishi Galant is just as colourful as the paintings. I didn't get outside the ...
This year was Singapore’s 50th birthday and TEDx Singapore featured talks from Singapore's history over that half century: The Undiscovered Country. I spent a few days rediscovering Singapore old and Singapore new and then spoke at the TEDx conference about my nearly ...
◄ My recent Komodo Islands boat trip wasn’t the only travel by sea in 2015, Maureen and I also made an opera cruise on the three-masted barque Sea Cloud II. Here it is under full sail. In fact we didn’t travel very much by windpower, although definitely rather more th...
I had a bunch of books to read for this year’s Warwick Writing Prize – I was one of the judges – and the book I brought in, Skyfaring, got through to the shortlist. The final winner was Redeployment. One of my reading highlights in 2015 was Abigail Ulman’s shor...
Jakarta appeared briefly on my travel itinerary in 2015. It’s a city somewhat lacking in iconic attractions, apart from Monas, the giant column better known as ‘Sukarno’s Last Erection.’ Like Mao – and many Western leaders for that matter – Sukarno was reputed to have...
India has many railways, but this photographic study follows the picturesque routes of 10 of the narrow gauge lines. Sadly the photographer and author Angus McDonald died before his book was published. In 2013 I was going to be on a panel with him at a travel writing ...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013