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Go fly your kite in Mildura

Posted on February 3, 2012

MILDURA one day, Melbourne the next, then a visit to Papua Guinea…there’s no set itinerary for Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler…the world is his playground.

Tony Wheeler

But because of his background, and travel business success, people sit up and take notice whenever the affable 65-year-old adventurer speaks, or makes a new entry on his web blog.

It’s a diary of the past and the present, attracting regular reader interest from around Australia and the world, and this week he’s given Mildura a handy ‘plug’ in the wake of his Australia Day address at Nowingi Place.

Under the heading ‘Afghanistan comes to Mildura, Australia.’ Tony describes Australia Day as the equivalent of the USA’s Independence Day or France’s Bastille Day celebrations.

“I go somewhere in Victoria every year as an Australia Day ambassador,” he writes. “This year it was Mildura, on the Murray River up in the north-west corner of the state.

“It’s a standard pattern, the Lions Club puts on a barbecue, the flag gets raised, the national anthem is sung, the local Mayor and I make speeches, the brass band (and a local rock band) play, a dozen people (in Mildura) are awarded Australian citizenship, hard working local volunteers are commended. It’s all good!”

Tony tells his blog followers that at every Australia Day there were various activities that he enjoyed, and he loved the one in Mildura….kite flying.

“Many refugees have settled in Mildura in recent years and a group of young guys from the Mildura Afghan community set up a table to show the kids how to make and fly kites,” he wrote.  “It was perfect, anybody who has been to Afghanistan – and I’ve been lucky enough to go there back in the 1970s and again in 2006 – will know how important kite flying is in Afghanistan. In the kite-flying season the Afghan skies are alive with kites.”

In fact, Tony comments that he was so impressed by this phenomenon that he wrote another best-seller on Afghanistan in general, and kite flying in particular, and included it on his blog. He said the Mildura kite flying seemed to go down well with the Australia Day crowd, writing that as the event wound down, lots of kids departed, “happily toting their Afghan-designed kites.”

Tony goes on to explain to blog readers that after the celebrations, he had a quick look around Mildura, including a trip to Rio Vista Homestead, the 1889 home of W. B. Chaffey, the Canadian born irrigation engineer who can claim to be the founding figure of the modern town.

He included a picture of the historic old home, along with pictures of the Australia Day breakfast, and some of the kids and their kites.

He told the Mildura Weekly on Tuesday that his next adventure is in a few days time, when he heads off for a look around Papua-New Guinea.

Tony and his Irish wife Maureen wrote their first travel guide after a trip through Asia in 1972. They called it ‘Across Asia on the cheap,’ hand collating and stapling 1500 copies of the guide at their kitchen table, distributing it to selected book shops in Sydney. It sold out in a week.

Eighteen months in South-East Asia resulted in their second guide, South-East Asia on a Shoestring, which they put together in a back-street hotel in Singapore in 1975. The ‘yellow bible’, as it became known because of its distinctive yellow cover, sold well over half a million copies worldwide, and is now in its 13th edition.

Today there are over 500 Lonely Planet titles, with the company now owned outright by BBC Worldwide, although Tony continues to play an active part in researching, writing and updating some of the guides. As well as that he has researched and published Chasing Rickshaws, a pictorial essay of the rickshaw in Southeast Asia, Time and Tide: The Islands of Tuvalu, a snapshot of life in the South Pacific, and more recently Rice Trails: A Journey Through the Ricelands of Asia and Australia.

His most recent research trips took him to the Falklands and South Georgia Island, and East Timor. The East Timor guidebook was awarded the Pacific Asia Travel Association 2005 Gold Award for Best Travel Guidebook. His Top 10 best sellers have been; The Travel Book, Europe on a Shoestring, China Travel Guide, USA Travel Guide, South America on a Shoestring, India Travel Guide, Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel, 2012, Japan Travel Guide, Great Journeys and New Zealand Travel Guide.

Maureen also has written extensively for the Lonely Planet series, and has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, Forbes, Esquire, Smithsonian, Qantas In-flight Magazine, San Francisco Examiner and Travel and Leisure magazines.

Their combined work has resulted in Lonely Planet being recognised as the largest travel guide book and digital media publisher in the world. It publishes about 500 titles in eight languages, as well as TV programs, a magazine, mobile phone applications and websites.

Its associated TV company has produced numerous series: Lonely planet six degrees, The Sport Traveller, Going Bush, Vintage New Zealand, Bluelist Australia and Lonely Planet, less travelled. It has its world headquarters in Footscray, with affiliate offices around the world.

Lonely Planet’s online community, the Thorn Tree,is used by over 600,000 travellers for trade tips and advice. The Lonely Planet website includes blogs, Facebook Connect, a groups platform, the ability to rate and review sites and restaurants, as well as a Trip Planner tool.

In 2006, Tony Wheeler launched a joint awareness campaign with Mark Ellingham (founder of Rough Guides, another established travel publisher) on the impact of commercial aviation on climate change. The pair’s companies urged their readers to “Fly less, stay longer” wherever possible.

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