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.
Last month I wrote an article on travel writing in the ‘good old days’ for the online ‘newspaper’ The Daily Beast. ◄ search for the cover of Scoop and you’ll find a number them, this older cover is my favourite although it’s not the current Penguin book cover. T...
Dropping by the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia the other morning I encountered this rather nice circular, shallow, blue pool in which a bunch of white bowls were floating. ▼ They gently circulated around, occasionally gently clicking up agai...
I’ve been bumping into the refugee question repeatedly in the past couple of weeks – and I know I’m going to collide with it lots more times in the weeks to come. Australia has a general election on 7 September – that’s less than two weeks away – and both sides (Kevin...
Marcello Di Cintio excellent book Walls visits a bunch of them, places where physical walls, barriers or fences have been set up to keep people in, or out or away. They’re an interestingly diverse bunch of walls although not one of them is a happy place and sadly the ...
With all that comedy currently taking place at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival the UK papers have been running stories on places where comedy is not so funny. Like North Korea, although I recently noted that Kim Jong Il (Fatty 2 according to Chinese bloggers) had quite ...
U Par Par Lay died earlier this month in Myanmar. He was one of the three Moustache Brothers, he and U Lu Maw were indeed brothers, U Lu Zaw was a cousin. The threesome were Burma’s most famous comedians in the time-honoured a-nyeint pwe, a traditional vaudeville comb...
▲ Every year there’s a new pavilion erected by the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park. This year it’s a white climber frame grid with glass or clear plastic panels by Sou Fujimoto. Indeed kids were climbing all over it, although not in this picture. ▲ Then I looke...
Crossing Mongolia and Russia on the Trans-Mongolian train last month we came across a checklist of buildings which were knocked down by Stalin in the 1930s and rebuilt since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Think of all the trouble Joseph could have saved if he’d had...
Tim Moore sets out on ‘Travels Through Unloved Britain,’ searching for all the worst places by whatever means you care to measure worst: unemployment, crime, health, pollution, ugly buildings, bad planning, you name it. To get from one miserable place to another he tr...
Travelling the Trans-Mongolian train from Beijing to Moscow last month put the final tick on a bucket list I drew up in 1992. I don’t think the expression ‘bucket list’ had been created back then, but the list I drew up had 15 ‘must do’s’ on it and 13 of them I enjoye...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013