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.
◄ When I rewrote the intro to Bad Lands for a recent reprint I noted that nothing much had changed, Fidel in Cuba, Kim Jong-il in North Korea, a mess in Iraq, no driving licences for women in Saudi Arabia, the generals in Burma, everywhere you looked it was no change....
▲ Next April is the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic and the Titanic Quarter, a major regeneration of the Belfast docklands where the Titanic was built, will open before that date rolls around. Well ‘it was OK when it left here’ they like to say a...
At the Edinburgh Fringe Festival Dave Gorman’s Power Point Presentation looked at how ‘facts’ on the web can propagate. He may have been born a Christian and become an atheist, but when his Wikipedia entry described him as Jewish that ‘fact’ soon spread far and wide. ...
I’ve often said that some of the best travel books are about staying home. Check Lonely Planet’s A House Somewhere for proof of that view. Bill Bryson’s latest book rambles around his old house in the English county of Norfolk. It’s an old church rectory, built in...
It’s festival time in Edinburgh so I took the train up to Scotland and spent a couple of days catching festival events – mainly comedy. There are literally thousands of performances during the festival (it concludes on 29 August). They include plenty of free events,...
We made a trip west from London to Devon and Cornwall, the counties at the extreme south-west corner of England. Cornwall ends at, appropriately, Lands End. Keep heading west and you reach the Americas. Our first stop was Torquay, a popular English seaside resort, pac...
▲ There’s plenty to catch your eye cycling around London. Like many London cyclists a spin round Richmond Park makes a pleasant little training run, for me it’s 10km there, 10km for each lap, 10km back. Richmond Park will feature in the Olympic Cycling Road Race eve...
The River Cam winds its picturesque way through the English university town of Cambridge, its tranquil waters crowded by colliding punters, its riverbanks fringed by willow trees. Behind King’s College – founded by King Henry VI in 1441 – you can find the town’s most ...
Having acquired two Brazzaville Beach stamps in my passport – one when I took the boat from Kinshasa to Kisangani, so I entered Congo Republic at Brazzaville Beach, the second when I left Congo Republic at the same point – it was obviously time I read William Boyd’s n...
I spent several weeks kicking around the two Congos with stops in Lubumbashi, Kinshasa, Kisangani and Goma in Congo DRC and a sidetrip to Brazzaville in Congo Republic. And then I went on to Rwanda to finish my trip. Along the way I also got a great view of Kilimanjar...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013