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.
My April travels through Africa took me to African-run projects in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, in particular Food4Education. Then I explored the Lake Turkana area of north Kenya, landscapes and the tribes and people of the region. Continuing to South Sudan the aban...
◄ 'Lucy,' the giant Jonglei Canal excavator My recent travels in South Sudan were principally in the Boma and Bandingilo National Parks – more on that in my next blog post – although my travels started and finished in Juba, the capital of South Sudan. I visited Kha...
My recent travels in north Kenya, around Lake Turkana, the Rift Valley lake which points north to the meeting point of Kenya with Ethiopia to the east and South Sudan to the west, was a chance to see landscapes and people. The landscapes varied from sand dunes to volc...
My recent African travels started in Nairobi, visiting Wawira Njiru’s amazing Food4Education project and reacquainting myself with the Thorn Tree Café, the inspiration for Lonely Planet’s long running and much missed Thorn Tree Travel Forum. Then I headed north for...
I’ve just spent a month in Africa, in Kenya, South Sudan and then, with Médecins Sans Frontières, in Nigeria. I started my travels with a brief visit to Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. ▲ Where I met Wawira Njiru at her Giga-Kitchen. This remarkable young woman studi...
‘Stop the Boats,’ it’s been a political war cry for both Australia and the UK. Look at a map and it’s easy to see why ‘stopping the boats’ is an easy story for Australians: Indonesia to Australia, the usual route, is a long way – 2000km across the Indian Ocean with pl...
◄ Tony on Day 1 on the Three Capes Track between Surveyors and Munro Hut Australia has some wonderful walking trails in every state, but most bushwalkers would agree that Tasmanian is the number one destination. The Overland Track between Cradle Mountain and Lake S...
I confess, I spend too much time looking at tracking apps – for boats as well as aircraft, what’s that cruise ship/container ship heading out into the bay from Melbourne? I regularly turn to flightradar24 to track a flight, perhaps it’s a visitor coming to stay with u...
I’m still ticking off Australian Islands after I wrote Tony Wheeler’s Islands of Australia for the National Library of Australia in Canberra. In 2021 I made a trip out from Brisbane to Moreton Island, so this time it’s the next island down the coast, North Stradbroke ...
Last year I spent three days walking the first 90-odd km of the Thames Path, the 215 mile (346km) walking route along the Thames River from its source in Gloucestershire to Oxford and on down through London to the Thames Barrage and the sea. I stayed at the very ordin...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013