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.
I’m one of the five judges for the 2015 Warwick Prize for Writing and yes, I am a graduate of Warwick University. The panel of judges is chaired by A L Kennedy and include Robert Macfarlane, I recently read his enchanted walking book The Old Ways. It’s not my first ti...
Lights of Mankind – it’s one of those books which you pick up as a remainder and you think ‘why didn’t this get more attention?’ Views from the International Space Station – a few years ago I went down to Baikonur in Kazakhstan to see a tourist go up to the station fo...
There’s constant discussion about how many seats airlines can stuff in. They all seem intent on shoving in one more across the aircraft or squeezing the ‘pitch,’ the distance between one row and the next, in order to get more passengers on board. But that’s back in ec...
▲ On a recent visit to Turin in Italy I encountered this nice bicycle warning, admonishing cyclists not to go speeding down the laneway next to the Egyptian Museum, scattering pedestrians in all directions. ◄ I posted a recent photo of something I encountered o...
I spent a couple of days in Turin –Torino in Italian – for the Salone Internazionale del Libro Torino in the Lingotto Fiere, the imaginatively restored old Fiat car factory. Complete with its test track on the roof. ▲ It’s one of those cities which underlines why w...
Don Watson is best known for being the speech writer and political adviser to former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating. Keating is famously touchy and his book about the Keating years – Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM – led to a m...
Why had I never been to Mallorca before? I finally got around to it with a bunch of friends, we all had a great week there, staying at the Hotel Son Paulo up in the hills at Orient. We never went near Magaluf, the package tour centre often referred to as Shagaluf. ...
In New York recently I set out to walk Broadway, it’s the one street which runs the entire length of Manhattan. ▲ So I took the subway down to South Ferry. ◄ It was an expensive trip, I put my credit card into a Columbus Circle subway station Metro Card machine,...
When I got off the plane in Nauru during my travels for Dark Lands I immediately bumped into Albert Podell. There aren’t a lot of reasons to go to Nauru, if you aren’t unlucky enough to be a refugee who has become entangled in Australia’s Pacific Solution and has been...
In the 24 hours since Nepal was hit by a huge earthquake I’ve been waiting for news from various friends who either live there or have Nepal connections. Over the years I’ve added up more than six months of my life in Nepal – lots of days on lots of trekking routes in...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013