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 spent last week in Russia – first in St Petersburg (I’d never been there) and then in Moscow (Maureen hadn’t been there since back in the 1970s, in the Soviet era. My time in Moscow was spent with Lonely Planet’s Russian publishing partners Eksmo who are...
Like many people in London I devoted some of yesterday to getting rather wet as a thousand odd boats rowed, paddled and powered their way down the Thames as part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant – that’s 60 years since she took up her role as Queen of England. ...
Maureen and I made a backstage tour of Kew Gardens in London. I’ve been to the gardens a few times over the years and made too many close visits on final approaches into London’s Heathrow Airport. There’s a great deal of discussion about London airports at the moment ...
▲ The Gladiator of Guitar We caught Elvis Costello performing at the Albert Hall on Wednesday night and in the penultimate encore who should stride on stage to join him but – as Costello put it – the gladiator of guitar, Russell Crowe. OK it’s hard to tell from th...
I’m chairing the panel of judges for the 2012 Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award, the annual award for the best British travel book. Currently I’m working through the entries with my fellow judges Sarah Spankie of Conde Nast Traveller magazine, Susie Dowdall the Boo...
Every now and then I bump into somebody who’s busy trekking around the world putting a ‘been there’ tick beside a list of every country in the world. You can have arcane arguments about what ‘been there’ means – is the airport transit lounge good enough? But the start...
▲ On 5 March in Melbourne, Australia I got up at dawn and drove over to Port Melbourne to see the Queen Mary 2 arrive in dock. A couple of weeks earlier I’d stopped in at Rabaul on my way through Papua New Guinea, having arrived in the country by a very much smalle...
▲ RAM cuts loose at the Oloffson Hotel Haiti may have been knocked flat by the earthquake, but the music and art is as vibrant as ever. On my previous, pre-earthquake, visit to Port-au-Prince I stayed at the Oloffson Hotel and caught RAM on their regular Thursday...
I was in Haiti before the earthquake, so my April trip, kicking off from the Dominican Republic, was a return visit. Things are still a long way from back to normal. The tent camps are still everywhere although one right in the centre of the capital, Port au Prince, ...
Nick Lake’s novel jumps back and forth between Haiti in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake and Haiti during the slave revolt which led to liberation from France. In ‘Now’ we’re with Shorty, 15 years old and trapped in a hospital room which has collapsed with the ear...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013