Planet Wheeler Foundation

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The Lonely Planet Foundation kicked off at Lonely Planet back in 1986-87 and grew right through Lonely Planet’s history. It was its own separate little centre inside the publishing house and you can read all about it in The Lonely Planet Story which we first published in 2010. When Maureen and I sold Lonely Planet we reconstituted the foundation as The Planet Wheeler Foundation (PWF) and continued many of the same projects. A couple of years ago we decided that trying to run more than 70 projects – mainly involved with health and education – around the world was more than we could do effectively and efficiently. So today PWF still continues and in financial terms is bigger than ever, but today we’re doing fewer but larger projects. Some of the projects and organisations that follow are genuine Planet Wheeler connections, others are just Tony & Maureen Wheeler, or even simply Tony or Maureen.
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We have three big projects with our name on them: The Wheeler Centre for ‘Books, Writing & Ideas’ is in Melbourne, Australia. The Wheeler Institute for Business & Development is at London Business School and concentrates on entrepreneurship in the developing world with Professor Rajesh Chandy as its guiding light. Recently we’ve established the Wheeler History of Travel Writing Programme at Warwick University and in late 2024 I visited Mussoorie in India to get a feel for one of their first PhD projects, looking at the history of hills stations in India during the British colonial period.
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A lot of our emphasis under the Planet Wheeler umbrella today is policy development and recently with more emphasis on Australia rather than world wide, so we support organisations like:
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We’re still heavily involved with medical and health organizations:
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  • I’ve always been a great believer in Médecins Sans Frontières – MSF – and in 2024 I was able to travel with MSF and visit a number of their amazingly hard working bases in northern Nigeria. Now there is a challenging environment.
  • FREO2 – the COVID-19 pandemic underlined how important oxygen can be, but in our modern western world it’s generally readily available. That isn’t always the case in the developing world and from its research at Melbourne University in Australia FREO2 worked to solve that problem. I was fortunate to see FREO2 at work in Uganda in 2022 and see how often it saved the lives of young children.
  • Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) is  ‘a fearless, independent organisation that protects and promotes human rights in Australia.’
  • Remarkably we are still able to help with health and education in Myanmar and Afghanistan 
Theatre
We like theatre so we support assorted theatre organisations in Australia – Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC), Red Stitch (now there’s a company that does a lot with a little) and Bell Shakespeare – in the UK – Almeida (they’re a favourite) Royal Court Theatre, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.  Plus you need somewhere to put performances on, which brings us to the Arts Centre Melbourne which is currently going through a major revamp.
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Galleries 
In Melbourne the National Gallery Victoria (NGV) is our go to and I particularly like their Australian art collection in the Ian Potter Centre at Federation Square. In the UK you might find us at the National Portrait Gallery. In 2018 I was even privileged to be one of the judges for the Travel Award component of the annual Portrait Awards.
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Writing & Writers Festivals 
The Wheeler Centre has been described as a ‘year round’ writers festival, but we also support the Melbourne Writers Festival and the Sydney Writers Festival plus, in Bali, Indonesia the wonderful Ubud Writers & Readers Festival.
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Libraries 
I’m a believer in libraries, after all I used them a lot in the early Lonely Planet days. Long before the internet came along and you could search for things on line. They still have lots of uses and are often full of young people and students, often because of free Wi-Fi connections. Every now and then, even today, libraries have some book on the shelves which you cannot easily find elsewhere. Like Peter Pinney’s Dust on My Shoes which, even though it was an Australian book by an Australian author, I tracked down at the Kensington Library in London when none of my local libraries in Melbourne had a copy.
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So I’m a regular at events at the terrific State Library of Victoria and I’ve supported assorted SLV projects and activities. I’m less frequently at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney although I did help the library to acquire the amazing diary of Rose de Freycinet, the adventurous young French woman, she was 22 when she set out, who stowed away on her own husband’s boat and in 1817-1820 became almost the first woman to sail around the world. Then there’s the superb National Library of Australia in Canberra and I’ve been connected with various mapping projects and exhibitions there and they published my book Tony Wheeler’s Islands of Australia.
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The British Library in London is another library favourite and again I’ve worked with them on assorted mapping exhibitions including one coming up in 2025 – Secret Maps
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Secret Maps – 10 October – 18 January 2026 – British Library
Secret Maps (working title) will explore the relationship between mapping and secrecy in a global context between the 9th and 21st centuries. It is an exhibition about how and why, contrary to their modern appreciation as things which openly provide knowledge of the world, maps have been used by governments, armies, businesses, organisations, communities and individuals to withhold all kinds of spatial knowledge.
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Visitors will see a range of items, that explore the use of maps as a form of control, including a secret Ordnance Survey map, copies of which were later destroyed, produced ahead of the General Strike of 1926 illustrating potential weak spots in the case of civil unrest Maps used by governments in international conflicts will also feature, including a map of part of the Normandy coast, produced in 1944 in the weeks leading up to D-Day. On the once top secret invasion plan can be seen detailed information about German defences, gathered from intelligence sources including low-level flying missions, special services agents and the French resistance.
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The exhibition will explore what types of spatial information (from hidden treasure to personal data) have been subject to attempts at secrecy. It will consider whether historical control of spatial information has influenced how the world is perceived, and whether, in an age where spatial data is routinely shared and democratised, it is easier or more difficult to keep a secret today.
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Other Information Sources
I like information, I like organisations that inform you, that supply the data, that help you with your research. And could there be a better place to look anything up than Wikipedia, the ‘free encyclopedia’? I’m such a believer that they list me as a ‘major donor’. I’m also a big believer in The Conversation which started in Australia in 2011, then added editions in the UK (2013), USA (2014), South Africa and France (2015), Canada, Indonesia and New Zealand (2017), Spain (2018), and Brasil (2023).
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Opera
Maureen likes opera, I go along, but it would always be Maureen leading me, never the other way around. So over the years there have been any number of operas in any number of countries. Even more for Maureen – including a Wagnerian Ring Cycle in Manaus on the Amazon River in Brazil. Talking of Ring Cycles, the fact that the great Joseph Wagner operatic extravaganza, Der Ring des Nibelungen, has run its cycle in Melbourne in 2013 and 2016 was all down to Maureen.
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Those cycles were put on by Opera Australia and today they have the Opera Australia Young Artist Program, training the opera singers of the future, because of Maureen’s support. She’s also keen on Melbourne Opera and intends to lend a hand with their performances of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg heading for the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne in February 2025.
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When we’re in London we attend operas at the Royal Opera House (yes Maureen is a supporter) and at many other English opera locations including Marylyn Abbot’s wonderful West Green House Gardens just west of London.
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◄  Tony at West Green Opera
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But our real UK opera destination is for the often brilliantly imaginative operas put on during the summer months at Opera Holland Park in Holland Park Gardens in London. The fact that we can walk there doesn’t hurt, but we are regularly in the Opera Holland Park audience and Maureen is definitely a big OHP supporter.
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A Scatter of Other Organisations
For a spell I was on the board of the Australian Himalayan Foundation (AHF) and I still work with them wherever possible. In 2025 photographer Richard I’Anson and I will be on a World Expeditions visit to the Mustang region of Nepal as a fund raiser for AHF. I’d say you could join us, but unfortunately the trip was instantly sold out. Mustang is up against the Tibet border and I was last there in 2011.
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For a number of years I was also on the board of Global Heritage Fund which combined archaeology with local level tourism. If the people around those important sites are directly involved whether it’s as a guide, operating a local guest house, feeding visitors at their café and so on, you know they’re going to look after the location. Global Heritage Fund has now been folded into the World Monument Fund so important GHF projects like Ciudad Perdida, the ‘Lost City’ in Colombia will continue to be protected. I walked up to Ciudad Perdida with Santiago Giraldo, the site specialist, in 2013.
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In the UK I’m a ‘fellow’ of the King’s Trust, formerly known as the Prince’s Trust, which does amazing work helping often disadvantaged young people find a place in our working world. Frankly I’m all for a Republic in Australia and for me it could be the Joe Blogg’s Trust as much as King Charles’, as long as it continued its good work.
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Politics? Well we should run a mile these days! Nevertheless I’m a big believer in Australia’s independent ‘Teals’ and as a result I’ve been supporting them through Simon Holmes à Court’s Climate 200. Obviously climate policy and climate change is a big part of their platform, but they’ve made it abundantly clear how important an independent voice can be in politics.