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.
▲ Cruising the Karakoram Highway When Maureen and I travelled up the Karakoram Highway through northern Pakistan into China in September we had periodic delays and stoppages. A couple of landslides blocked the road, there were political protests because of that ‘...
I’m old enough to still like having a watch on my wrist, although I do look at my phone when I want to know what time it is somewhere else. Is the UK 9 hours behind or 11? Earlier this year I dropped in to the watch museum at Glasshütte in the once-upon-a-time East...
Last week I had dinner at Melbourne University with assorted people involved in the media, journalism and publishing in Australia and the guest of honour Lord Justice Leveson. Sir Brian Leveon was in Australia to deliver lectures on his recently completed report into ...
My recent visit to Belgium was in pursuit of King Leopold II’s Belgian Congo connections in Brussels and Ostend. I was only a few steps out of the Ostend train station when I came upon the Amandine, the last Ostend fishing trawler to operate in Icelandic waters. L...
A weird relationship isn’t it? Underlined yet again by the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut. The USA gun illustration is on the wall at the front of the ex-US Embassy in Tehran, Iran. I live part of the year in Australia (annual deaths by guns...
▲ Paykans and the Ayatollah in Isfahan OK it’s a movie, not a book or an article – I went to see Argo the Ben Affleck film about getting six American diplomats out of Tehran during the 1980 Iran ‘hostage crisis’. Great movie although it’s been criticised for glor...
Last year I blogged about visiting the National Library in Canberra, Australia and finding out about enclaves and exclaves along the borders between India and Bangladesh and between Belgium and the Netherlands. While I was in Belgium continuing my pursuit of King Le...
Last year I blogged about my travels around the Congo (the big, bad Congo DRC although I also hopped across the border – the Congo River – to Congo Brazzaville). Plus I read the best book to read about the Belgian colonial horror story – King Leopold’s Ghost. On my...
Earlier this year I travelled up through the north Solomon Islands and joined a village boat across from Shortland Island to Bougainville in Papua New Guinea. I wrote it up as taking the Back Door to Bougainville, since it’s not an official entry point into the countr...
▲ Last week I was in Banteay Chhmar , an Angkorian ruins site in the far north-east of Cambodia. I was there with John Sanday, the British archaeologist who has been working on this site for three years now. John was also responsible for a great deal of the preserv...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013