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.
Between my recent visit to Shanghai and to Guizhou Province in China I stopped in Hong Kong to meet some friends and climb a little mountain. Hong Kong has a surprising amount of countryside and walking trails and lots of peaks you can climb, to peer through the China...
▲ At Hong Kong Airport these warning signs appear on all the escalators. You’ll also hear regular warnings on the MTR – the Hong Kong subway system – to pay attention to the outside world, not to focus all your attention on your phone. These mobile/cell phone warnings...
There’s a new Lonely Planet travel book about to hit the shelves – An Innocent Abroad – and I’m one of the 35 contributing writers. My tale, Cabbage Soup, involves arriving at a campsite on the Yugoslavian Adriatic Coast back in the Tito days and discovering the campe...
My Guizhou travel, with the village of Dali as the main focus, started and finished in the capital city, Guiyang. There are direct flights to and from Hong Kong and there’ll soon be a high speed train service linking Guiyang with Guangzhou. ▲ The Jiaxiu Pavilion in...
Global Heritage Fund are working on the preservation of Dali, a Dong minority village in Guizhou province, but tourism has already arrived at some corners of the region. Notably in Zhaoxing, described in the Lonely Planet China guide as the ‘quintessential Dong villag...
My Guizhou trip was involved with Global Heritage Fund’s work in the region. Guizhou is one of the most ethnically mixed regions of China with minority groups making up more than a third of the total population. The biggest group are Miao people, closely related to th...
It’s always nice to end up somewhere which seems to be off the map and there are certainly plenty of those places in China. Like Feiyunya, about 130 km (in a straight line) north-east of Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province. It doesn’t appear on maps, in our scrip...
I spent a few days looking around Guizhou. It is (or was) the poorest province in China, a place ‘without three li of flat land, three days of fine weather, or three coins to rub together.’ It’s also a place where, clearly, an awful lot of development is happening. ...
My room at the Hotel Icon in Hong Kong a few days ago featured an in-room printer, ideal for when you need to print off boarding passes or other paperwork. And a free minibar, now that’s a nice touch. ◄ And, best of all, a free mobile phone. When you check in you g...
▲ Take the nose and tail of three private jets past their use-by date, join them together with long twisting tubes and turn them into three snakes writhing across the gallery floor. It’s Telle mère tel fils by Adel Abdessemed. Art galleries are all the go in China ...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013