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.
I’ve recorded several podcasts, interviews, conversations recently.
At London Business School Maureen and I recorded Journeys, a conversation with Rajesh Chandy the Professor of Entrepreneurship in the Developing World at the Wheeler Institute. People seemed to enjoy it, someone suggested that we ‘looked like two teenagers our to start an exciting adventure,’ not business like at all.
With Tyrel Cameron Eskelson I talked on his Interlocutor podcast about my travel life, starting in Pakistan when I was a small child right up to travel in recent weeks and for the rest of 2025.
. I spent the first week and a half of 2014 in Tonga, departing just as the islands were hit by Cyclone Ian. I’m still waiting to hear the inside story on what happened on Ha’apai, my last stop in Tonga and the island group hardest hit. Meanwhile let’s look at some...
I’m continuing to watch the scary route of Cyclone Ian across the islands of Tonga where I was just a couple of days ago. I’ve got my fingers crossed for the people we met while we were there and I’m waiting to hear they’re OK. ▲ A Hobbit-themed Boeing 777, pho...
.I’ve spent the past two weeks in the Pacific nation of Tonga – dividing my time between the main island, Tongatapu, and the two northern island groups, Ha’apai and Vava’u. Coincidentally Ha’apai was one of the 10 top regions in Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2014 rat...
. Melbourne’s big ferris wheel is finally back in operation. Back in 2009 – after I’d been for rides on the London Eye and the Singapore Flyer – commented on the sad story of Melbourne’s version. It opened on my birthday – 20 December 2008 – and shut down just 34 d...
The Germans are experts at stringing words together to produce interesting – even quite necessary – words of often quite incredible length. I mean why say ‘lover’ or ‘partner’ when you could much more accurately say that she’s your Lebensabschnittpartner, ‘the person...
When I’m looking for ‘interesting’ (which could also be read as ‘expensive’) hotels I often use the Tablet Hotels website and booking operation. Tablet’s on-line magazine regularly features interesting categories with an assortment of places that fit the definition. ...
I posted a couple of weeks ago about how I was going to a lot of opera, the Melbourne Ring Cycle, 16 hours of Wagnerian music spread over four days. Toss in the necessary rest days and it takes a week to get through. I could equally accurately title it Maureen’s ...
▲ Me in 1977, driving a Holden GTS up the winding road to Arthurs Seat along the coast from Melbourne. (photographer Adrian van Valen) It was the iconic Australian car. The first FJ Holden rolled off the assembly line in 1948, but in four years times (so just a y...
When I visited the Yungang Caves in China recently I commented on how the great regret of my travel life was missing out on the Buddha statues at Bamiyan in Afghanistan. I didn’t get up to Bamiyan when I was in Afghanistan in 1972. When I got there in 2006 the statues...
Melbourne Now is a huge exhibit of contemporary Melbourne Art at both the National Gallery of Victoria and at the associated Ian Potter Centre, on the other side of the Yarra River in central Melbourne, Australia. As the NGV website explains ‘Melbourne Now celebrates ...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013