Tony Wheeler

Tony Wheeler created Lonely Planet after travelling Asia’s ‘hippie trail’ in the early 1970s. Today, after 100 million books, offices on three continents and everything digital from phone apps to websites, inflight infotainment systems to ebooks, the business has moved on to new owners, giving Tony even more time to venture down roads less travelled.

Post Lonely Planet his activities have included the Planet Wheeler Foundation which supports educational and health projects in the developing world and the Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing & Ideas in Melbourne.

What Tony hoped to get out of TEDx
Travel to the world’s more ‘edgy’ locales has always fascinated me. I want to get my audience to think about what this means through my stories from travelling along George W Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ for Bad Lands and the lessons I’ve been learning from my recent Dark Lands travels.

Tony’s favourite TEDTalk
I was going to start with talk. And then I discovered that it tops Bill Gates’ list!

Tony Wheeler: Travels in Bad and Dark Lands, TEDxQueenstown 2013

Contact Tony Wheeler
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