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.
A month ago I posted a review of Mark Binelli’s page-turning history of Detroit and some thoughts on my own connections with the city. It’s been an interesting month, to say the least, for Detroit, now the USA’s biggest city bankruptcy case. At the same time there hav...
I’ve still not flown on a Boeing 787 Deamliner – but then A380s had been in service for nearly two years before I made my first flight on the double decker Airbus. I’ve flown them on a number of occasions since, but my first flight wasn’t too successful. Due to a tech...
In Yekateringburg, part way across Russia on our Trans-Mongolian trip, our guide claimed her town’s big Lenin statue was one of only eight big ones left in Russia. We didn’t get to look at it, time was pressing and it was further down the main drag, but it sounded lik...
Theatrically and operatically it’s been a travelling five days in (and out) of London. I’ve already reported on going to the Congo when Maureen and I saw A Season in the Congo on Saturday (Young Vic Theatre). I’ll be talking about the Congo in its latest incarnation a...
My new book Dark Lands is coming out next week and my travels for the Democratic Republic of the Congo chapter took me to Kinshasa, Kisangani and Lubumbashi, all of which feature in A Season in the Congo, currently running at the Old Vic theatre in London. Of course a...
The three letter codes which identifies where your bag should go to are often amusing – LAX for Los Angeles or SIN for that most sin-free nanny state Singapore. I’m heading off to San Francisco soon, SFO which in England means Serious Fraud Office. Plus there are the ...
We’re well into European Russia at Kazan, we’ve travelled around 7000km from Beijing and have just 820km to go. Kazan is our last long stop before Moscow and it’s a very long one, morning arrival, evening departure and the next day we rolled into Moscow before 12 no...
I won’t try to improve on their publisher’s (Allen & Unwin’s) blurb: Uncrossable rivers! Hospitable nomads! Rabid dogs! Marijuana fields! Hailstone flashfloods! Maidens on horseback! Underpants wrestling! Toxic mountain-top lakes! Stupid westerners! And the mounta...
After another long day’s train travel we’re now over 6000km from Beijing and this is our last day in Asia. As we depart Yekaterinburg we’re crossing the Urals and pass a lake and then a tunnel which officially marks the transition from Asian Russia into European Rus...
4672km from Beijing ▲ On the long stretch (1842km) from Irkutsk to Novosibirsk there was plenty of time to gaze out the window and watch Siberian forest pass by. For much of that distance across Siberia there’s appear to be nothing to the north of the railway lin...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013