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.
Montreal is the 3rd largest French speaking city in the world, Paris the 2nd. Number 1? That’s Kinshasa, stop two on my Congo Democratic Republic excursion. As a degree of stability returns to much of the country, railway lines reopen and roads are improved (often fro...
◄ The elephant statue in a roundabout is reckoned to be the centre of Lubumbashi I'm travelling around the Congos – both of them, the Congo Democratic Republic (aka Congo DRC), that’s the big bad one, and the Congo Republic (aka Congo Brazzaville), that’s the ex-Fr...
After my BMW visit to China in March I was invited to visit BMW’s headquarters in Munich, have a look around and find out about their new BMW i sub-brand for electric and hybrid cars which will launch in 2013. I’ve already got a hybrid car, a Toyota Prius, but to get ...
Jason Stearns’ book Dancing in the Glory of Monsters tries to unpick the story of ‘The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa.’ Clearly a near impossible task, because you’re still left fairly bemused at the end how all these events – from the Cold War to t...
Patrick Leigh Fermor died on 10 June, at the age of 96. Of course I read Time of Gifts – the first part of his walk (as an 18 year old!) from England to Istanbul. And of course I loved it and over the years I’ve had other Fermor encounters. Last year, on our London-di...
There’s a new expression in our travel vocabulary: ‘range anxiety.’ You suffer range anxiety when you’re driving somewhere in an electric car and you worry that you may not get there before the battery runs flat. Electric cars are still in their early days but when...
‘It’s a narrowboat, not a barge (they carry coal), not a longboat (they carry Vikings), this is a narrowboat.’ That was my introduction to English canal travel quite a few years ago on a trip with my pre-teen (at the time) children. We travelled up the Avon River to S...
Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan is the subtitle of Kim Barker’s gonzo-journalistic account of seven years in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Having grown up in Montana and never really travelled she was clearly ideal material for the trouble-zone posting. First she...
▲ Erwin Wurm's Fat Car Maureen and I were in Tasmania with some friend just before Hobart’s amazing new MONA – Museum of Old & New Art – opened in January. It’s the creation of David Walsh who made his considerable fortune from gambling. Not that chasing-the-...
◄ My shadow and my fold-up-Brompton bicycle beside Lake Burley Griffin in Australia’s capital Canberra. I was in Canberra to do a talk for the government’s Intellectual Property Australia organization, brought my bicycle with me and did something I’ve been meaning to ...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013