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.
Maureen and I went along to the Whitley Fund for Nature’s annual awards at the Royal Geographical Society on Thursday night. The winners were: ● John Kahekwa – gorillas in Democratic Republic of the Congo – I’d looked up which gorilla family we bumped into on my go...
It’s coming up for its 40th birthday in October this year, the very first Lonely Planet guidebook resulted from the trip Maureen and I made across Asia in 1972. We drove an old Minivan from London to Afghanistan, sold it in Kabul and continued by whatever form of ...
Flying from Verona in Italy to London Gatwick in England I could look north from my British Airways 737 window seat and see just how close England (on the left) is to France (on the right).
And Other Adventures in the World’s Most Polluted Places is the subtitle for Andrew Blackwell’s worldwide jaunt around a collection of destinations not on most people’s next vacation wish list. Although curiously sunny Chernobyl seems to be becoming a favourite for da...
I spent the weekend in Trento, an hour north of Verona and a jumping off point for the Dolomite mountains of the Alto Adige or South Tyrol region. I spend a week walking in the region back in 2002. I was speaking at the annual Trento Film Festival, it’s been going on ...
I seem to have an ongoing involvement with Lonely Planet, even though Maureen and I sold out of the business several years ago. We have become involved with another publishing house – Text Publishing in Melbourne, Australia. A number of books from Text have appeared o...
I made a quick trip from Australia to New Zealand to speak at a TEDx conference in Queenstown in early April. Unfortunately I didn’t have a chance to do anything apart from the conference – I’ve got some New Zealand walks which remain high on my must do list. ▲...
▲ A British Airways 747s at Heathrow and A Qantas 747 at Melbourne ▼ A recent story in The Independent forecast the departure of British Airway’s 747, Boeing’s jumbo has been in service since 1970, but they’re rapidly disappearing. Singapore Airlines has go...
I’ve recently joined the board of Global Heritage Fund – my trips last year to the amazing ruins of Banteay Chhmar in Cambodia and earlier this year to the Lost City, Ciudad Perdida, in Colombia were both to GHF sites. GHF are launching a new project, to protec...
The Arcelor Mittal Orbit is the weirdly twisting tower constructed for the 2012 Olympics in London. The whole Olympic Park is in the process of being redeveloped so hardly any of it is currently open to the public. You can visit the tower and zip up to the 80 metr...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013