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.
2830km from Beijing We departed our Lake Baikal barbecue late in the evening and foolishly joined some other party goers for a last drink in one of the restaurant cars. The night went on rather too long before Maureen and I lurched back to our compartment. Since ...
In between Ulan Ude, our first stop in Russia, and Irkutsk, where we would abandon the train for a night, we made a sidetrip on the Circum-Baikal line. It feels like a misnomer, the 160km diversion, turning off the main Trans-Siberian line at Slyudyanka, doesn’t go ‘a...
654km from Ulaanbaatar to Ulan Ude, 2215km from Beijing We departed Ulaanbaatar at night and around dawn we rolled up at Suchbataar on the Mongolian side of the border. We’d been told how to handle things here, leave your passport and arrival forms on the table i...
1561 km from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar We’ve just finished the Trans-Mongolia train trip from Beijing to Moscow. We didn’t take the regular straight through train trip nor did we get off and on at various places along the way. We did it easy on the chartered Zar...
It’s been on my wish list for too many years, but I’ve finally done the big Russian train trip. In fact there are three big Russian train trips, all of them ending in Moscow. We took the Trans-Mongolian which kicks off in Beijing, heads north through Mongolia and meet...
I’ve just read Mark Binelli’s superb book about the decline and fall – and perhaps rebirth – of Detroit. Mark has written for Rolling Stone and indeed this reads like a Rolling Stone page turner, a tale of alternate shock and awe. There’s a great line about using Detr...
It’s the time of year when fires – natural or deliberately lit – break out all over Sumatra in Indonesia and the smoke drifts across Malaysia and Singapore causing local outrage and international disputes. It seems like every year is worse than the year before. ...
Until Thursday I’d never been to Margate, but I’ve had a soft spot for the very English beach resort ever since the first edition of the Lonely Planet Britain guide, back in 1995. We hadn’t been very kind to Margate and our researcher Richard Everist wrote that: ‘L...
In my May visit to Copenhagen I saw more than just the lineup of wind turbines from my flight in. ◄ An hour later I was standing beside Copenhagen’s iconic image, harbourside figure of the Little Mermaid. Where y...
In my recent tradition of ‘looking at things’ on my recent travels here are my favourite sights in Bath, that most Roman of English towns. And a terrible comfortable English town today. In the town centre the Abbey Church of St Peter & St Paul, started out as a Be...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013