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.
▲ Sometimes flights are interesting all the way. When I looked out from the Tullamarine Airport (Melbourne, Australia) terminal at the Qantas A380 I was about to board I could see its name just below the flight deck windows: Nancy-Bird Walton. It was the first Airbus...
There’s not much vacation time in Laura Jean McKay’s electric collection of short stories. Dark short stories, nobody is having a really good time whether they’re foreign visitors on a train heading for a Khmer Rouge ambush soon after Cambodia reopened in the early 19...
I love the way one experience leads you to another. Surprisingly often I go somewhere and what I see instantly makes me want to see something else. Earlier this year, at the enormously popular Viking exhibit (it finished a couple of weeks ago) at the British Museum, I...
In a recent posting on Istanbul I commented how on-the-ground reality could run well ahead of our up-to-the-minute internet, with a photograph from the Galata Tower of the Golden Horn, Istanbul’s historic inlet from the Bosphorus. The new (early 2014) Golden Horn Metr...
◄ My recent Turkey travels featured stops at assorted archaeological sites and museums – recently excavated Göbekli Tepe, Nemrut Dağı, Gaziantep where the museum features wonderful mosaics from the Roman city of Belkıs-Zeugma, Catalhöyük, the amazing ruins at Sagalas...
A popular coastal resort Antalya was the jumping off point for visits to three nearby archaeological sites – Termessos, Aspendos and Perge. It’s also got some archaeology right in the town, the narrow streets of the old port area of Kaleiçi has remnants of the old Rom...
Just 17 km north-west of Antalya and a stone’s throw off the freeway this is the most developed of the three archaeological sites close to the Mediterranean resort. It was also the last stop in my Global Heritage Fund circuit of Turkey’s sites, although there is one m...
The great theatre at Aspendos, it seats 15,000 and is probably the best-preserved theatre from Roman times, is regularly used for performances. It was also undergoing some heavy-duty renovation work when I visited the site so it was not possible to go inside. Aspendos...
Antalya, the Turkish coastal resort town, has three nearby archaeological sites – Aspendos, Perge and Termessos. After the impressive restoration work I’d seen at Sagalassos, Termessos was a real contrast. This was a ruin in a truly ruined state. As we drove up to ...
My circuit of Turkish archaeological sites continued to Sagalassos, about 120km inland from the resort city of Antalya. It’s a remarkable site because extensive work on the site only commenced in the mid-1980s, led by a team from Belgium under Marc Waelkens. So its de...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013