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've been going through my elderly mother’s photo collection in recent weeks. I posted some shots of vintage BOAC airliners, reminders of my dad (an RAF pilot during WW II) and his time with the airline. Here’s a BOAC check in desk from over 50 years ago. Doesn’t look...
There was lots of opera in my life last week – a complete circuit of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, the Olympics (or Mt Everest if you wish) of opera. Maureen has spent a lot of time over the last few years persuading Opera Australia to put on the Ring Cycle in Melbourne....
I’ve often said the scariest moments of my life have all been in taxis. Well there haven’t been any really bad ones in 2013, but there have certainly been some taxi encounters. Of course you have to get ripped off by a taxi driver somewhere in your travels and my b...
At a couple of locations in London a new British Airways electronic billboard ad switches from the regular ad to a small girl pointing at a BA aircraft as it passes overhead. In this case she’s pointing out it’s BA 883 arriving from Kiev.
▲ Aircraft geeks fight to get on the first commercial flights on new aircraft – Singapore Airlines auctioned off seats for the first flights on their double-decker Airbus A380 for example. Last flights can also attract a premium and Singapore Airlines tried that too w...
The latest of life’s many annoyances! OK, they’ve been around for years, if you wanted to pay with one of the ‘expensive’ credit cards (ie American Express or Diners Club) you got charged for the privilege. Use a Visa or Mastercard please. Now they’re starting to char...
A quick trip to Canberra for the opening of the National Library of Australia's Mapping our World exhibit. It's a superb exhibition, open until 10 March 2014. It features maps from the National Library's own collection, from media mogul Kerry Stoke's superb private co...
I seem to have encountered Detroit regularly in recent months. I enjoyed Mark Binelli’s superb book about the collapse and fall of the Motor city. Then I noticed Detroit shopping bags in a Whole Foods Supermarket in London. And Made-in-Detroit Shinola bicycles in Palo...
Three recent books I’ve read, all with some travel connection. Transatlantic – Colum McCann – was a long-list contender for this year’s Booker Prize. The first flight across the Atlantic in 1919 plays a key role in the book from start to finish. I’ve always been fa...
▲The trouble with throwing coins in Chinese fountains is there aren’t many Chinese coins, you rarely seem to break a one yuan note (¥1 equals 16cents US) although there is also a half yuan (or five jiao) note. There are three coins – one jiao (¥0.10), five jiao (¥0....
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013