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.
Aung San Suu Kyi is out. She’s spent 15 of the past 21 years in some form of detention, the last spell stretching back to 2003. Just over a year ago her most recent period of house arrest was extended by another 18 months because a crazy tourist had decided to swim ac...
Curiously at present this book only appears to be published in Australia, although Amazon.com have it on Kindle. Thomas Keneally is a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction titles although he’s best known for the Booker Prize winning Schindler’s Ark which became t...
Earlier this year I spoke at a hotel conference in Macau and listed 10 things I don’t like about hotels – I’ll put that list up on this site in the next week or two. Meanwhile I’m going to vent about my number one hotel dislike – inflated internet connection charge...
▲ A Qantas 747 taking off (seen from British Airway's Heathrow Terminal 5) Google ‘Qantas’, ‘engine failure’ and ’Singapore’ and you’ll follow a sorry tale. On 4 November a Qantas A380 (double decker Airbus) suffered an ‘uncontained’ engine failure as it climbed ...
I keep talking about visiting Congo and keep bumping into people with a Congo connection. I nominated the Zaire version (there are two Congo’s ‘Republic’ and ‘Democratic Republic,’ the Zaire one) as the place I really need to go to on the Jennifer Byrne book programme...
Almost 40 years ago, travelling across Asia Maureen and I flew from Calcutta to Thailand and we still remember the culture shock of arriving in Bangkok. Compared to India it was amazingly well lit, air-conditioned, orderly, efficient and clean. ▲ street cow in V...
The last leg of our multi-stop London to Australia flight didn’t start or end the way it was planned. In F-to-A 1 I wrote about the history of flying to Australia. F-to-A 2 went from London via Jersey, the south of France and Malta to the Greek island of Crete. F-to-A...
Twitchhiker (Paul Smith) is the second travel book this year which I have really not liked, To Hellholes & Back was the other. The premise: hitchhike from north England to the antipodal position on earth, Campbell Island off to the south of New Zealand. He does...
Our trip is taking 25 days and makes 22 stops along the way. It's organised by the small Australian operator Heron Airlines. My first posting on the trip was an introduction to the history of London to Australia by air. Flying to Australia 2 covered the trip from Lond...
Day 6 and the next stage of my London to Australia flight should have been from the Greek island of Crete to Alexandria in Egypt. Except when we got to the airport we couldn’t take off. Either we weren’t allowed to depart Greece or we weren’t allowed to arrive in Egyp...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013