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.
In 2022 I made a little USA and Canda Road Trip with British travel journalist Simon Calder. We started in Milwaukee, went north to Green Bay, Wisconsin, spent a night in delightful Eau Claire, cut across to Hibbing, Minnesota and managed to visit Bob Dylan’s childhoo...
The popular holiday port of Málaga (population 600,000) is less than 150km from Gibraltar and 600km down the coast from Valencia (population 840,000), the coastal city which was hit so hard by disastrous killer floods in late October 2024. It was another place I visit...
Arthur Frommer, the pioneering author of Europe on $5 a Day, died at the age of 95 on 18 November 2024. The Guardian wrote that his book’s advice ‘became so standard that it’s hard to remember how radical it seemed in the days before discount flights and backpacks....
◄ Eric Beecher’s The Men Who Killed the News Eric Beecher is the principal owner of Private Media which publishes the daily Australian online newsletter Crikey. In June 2022 Crikey suggested that Murdoch hands weren’t so clean when it came to Trump supporters makin...
No, Mt Kosciuszko at 2228metres is not the highest mountain in Australia – I finally got around to making the stroll to the top of that peak in 2021. If you want to reach the high point on undisputed Australian territory – ie not somewhere in Antarctica – then you sti...
In October I was in India, I started in Delhi where I was surprised to encounter lots of Lamborghinis at Delhi’s rather marvellous Imperial Hotel. Then I continued to Jaipur where I was wheeled around by Women With Wheels, a terrific program to put women behind the wh...
◄ Villefranche, squeezed between Nice and Monaco, could you ask for a more postcard-like French coastal town? Who doesn’t like the south of France, that golden coastline, the Côte d’Azur? I travelled along that coast while I was still at university in the late ‘60s...
It’s a British National Trail, the only one to follow a river and definitely a river worth following. From its source west of Oxford it runs for 184 miles (294km) through the Cotswolds, to Oxford and on past iconic English names like Abingdon, Henley and Windsor and t...
It was appropriate that just before my recent visit to Albania I read Enver Hoxha's Long Shadow, John Watkins’ illuminating look at the country he first visited back in 1987 and then compared it to Albania today. Enver Hoxha, Albania’s despotic dictator, died in 1985,...
Will I ever escape from Afghanistan? I recently put a little money into an organisation which is still trying to do something useful for female education in the country. Tell us why you’re doing this, they said, and I wrote ‘I seem to be unable to get away from Afghan...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013