The Lonely Planet Story: Two's company

"Twenty-seven cents," I said, surveying the pathetic collection of coins in the palm of my hand.

A few minutes earlier, the last car we'd hitched had cruised into Sydney across the Harbour Bridge. The unfinished Opera House rose up beside the harbour to our left. As we rolled across the bridge, Maureen had leaned towards me in the back of the car and whispered: "How much money do we have left?"

It was the day after Christmas, 1972. Maureen was 22; I was 26.

We stared at our small collection of coins. We were half the world away from home, friendless and jobless.

So ended the extraordinary London-to-Sydney journey made by Tony and Maureen Wheeler half a lifetime ago, when global travel was far more difficult – yet in some ways much easier. The Wheelers enjoyed an encounter with the Shah in pre-revolutionary Iran and chilled out in peace-loving Kabul.

Boxing Day, 1972 also marked the start of the equally extraordinary Lonely Planet story, growing from a kitchen-table enterprise to the international travel-guide business of the BBC. In Once While Travelling, published this week, the Wheelers reveal the sequence of happy accidents that gave birth to a travel revolution. These include their landing in a remote port in Western Australia, after they hitched a lift on yacht from Bali, along with fellow travellers Rob and Maggie...

From our boat anchored off Exmouth beach, [skipper] David rowed ashore, tracked down Exmouth's immigration official and brought him back to the yacht. We were ferried ashore in a dinghy, and Maureen and I got our photograph taken standing barefoot in the sand at the water's edge.

"So, are you visitors or immigrants?" the official asked.

"Is there a choice? What's the difference?" Maureen queried.

"Well, nothing really," he replied, "except that if you're an immigrant then you get three months' free medical insurance."

"I guess we'd better be immigrants," we chimed, spotting a bargain too good to miss.

It was a wise decision, since only a year later the visa regulations were comprehensively changed. Once our passports were stamped, we discovered how fastidious Aussie customs officials could be. Our toothpaste tube was unrolled and the plugs on our backpack frames were removed and the tubes inspected. We put it down to the fact that yachts arriving from Indonesia were not an everyday occurrence. Unfortunately, the customs guy found something interesting belonging to Rob.

A few nights earlier, Rob had decided to work off the last of his small collection of pre-rolled joints. It was passed around, its distinct lack of potency commented upon and then it was forgotten. The reason for its failure as a joint was straightforward: it wasn't one. We'd smoked one of his roll-your-owns. The last joint was still in the cigarette pack, where it was discovered by the customs official. Rob was arrested and charged with possession of a few grams of marijuana.

Later on, the rest of us repaired to a pub for our first Australian beer. Maureen commented to Maggie that her boyfriend's chosen place of concealment was pretty dumb, and our voyage together finished with a small but noisy argument. It shouldn't have ended like this because they had been remarkably helpful to us from the moment we first met, but it was not surprising. We'd been together long enough that at least one good yelling match was well overdue and it was certainly time for Maureen and me to hit the road. We were uncomfortably close to penniless by this time, so employment was in order.

"How far to the main road to Perth?" we asked the barman.

"One hundred and thirty-five miles to the bitumen," was the reply.

So, late in the afternoon, we walked to the edge of town and stuck out our thumbs.

Later we were to discover that Australians complain about visitors who expect the place to be like a Crocodile Dundee movie, with kangaroos bounding off in every direction. Paul Hogan was still more than 10 years away from killing a croc at this time, but those myths were alive and kicking on the edge of Exmouth. We saw our first 'roo lolloping away before we'd even thumbed a ride.

And what rides we thumbed. We soon found ourselves bouncing along the road with a friendly Yugoslav truckie (truck driver) who periodically hauled a cold stubby (small bottle of beer) from his esky (ice cooler) and removed the top with his teeth. Some time later we turned off the road to stop at a beachside pub, which I remember being full of Aborigines and road-workers. Later still, we once more found ourselves with the Yugoslav truckie, heading back towards Exmouth. By this time it was late and we had no idea what we were doing, or where we were going. Our truckie friend flashed his lights for an oncoming car to stop, then he got out and talked to the driver. Returning to the truck, he told us the driver was the Beaurepaire tyre-company rep, heading home to Carnarvon, and he'd be happy to give us a ride. So we climbed into his ute (pickup truck) and headed south.

"I was planning to pull over and sleep by the roadside," he explained, "but if you can keep me awake, I'll drive home. My wife's pregnant so she'll be glad to see me. It's about 230 miles."

We rolled into Carnarvon after midnight. We slept on a mattress in the back of a station wagon in their garage, lulled to sleep by the gentle noises of a joey sleeping in a canvas bag hanging on the garage wall. The young kangaroo's mother had died after being hit by a car and our u o tyre rep had rescued it and brought it home. The next morning, we were dropped at a truckstop on the edge of town, where we soon convinced a truckie to give us a ride to Perth, another 600 miles south.

A day and a half later we arrived. The drive had been furiously hot and we'd spent one night sleeping beside the truck off the road. We rode a train into the town centre and, as we came out of the station, a passing driver saw our backpacks and offered us a ride.

Later, we bought a newspaper, found a boarding house up the hill from the city centre, and rented a cheap room. Sometime in that week, I entered our weights in my diary. Between England and Australia I'd lost a stone, falling from 8st 11lbs in my birthday suit to 7st 10lbs with clothes on. Maureen was equally skinny: in July, she'd weighed 8st 5lbs (naked) but now she was down to 7st 8lbs (clothed).

We should have phoned home. We'd sent a postcard from Bali, nonchalantly telling my parents we'd scored a ride on a yacht and would be in Australia in a week. A week later, when the card landed on their doormat in England, we were sailing round in circles and nowhere near Australia. Another week later, when they were beginning to wonder why they hadn't heard from us, we were still sailing south. Another week passed before we arrived in Australia and made our way to Perth. And now another week would pass before we got to the east coast and, finally, made that overdue call to my frantic parents.

After the sheer emptiness of the highway south from our landing point, Perth seemed bright, modern and, after Asia, tidy and quiet. Maureen got a job as a "flying domestic", rushing round Perth on a pre-Christmas house-spring-cleaning mission, while I devoted myself to getting a refund on our unused Timor–Darwin airline ticket. We were down to our last few dollars, but the A$80 ticket refund, minus a cancellation charge, plus the money from Maureen's job, was enough to point us towards Sydney.

A find-a-ride service put us in touch with Brian, a guy in the RAAF planning to drive home to Sydney for Christmas, and with Rod, another English traveller. We agreed to split the fuel costs for a trip across the Nullarbor Desert. Brian and I would share the driving as neither Maureen nor Rod could drive. The east-to-west track across Australia was unsurfaced; it wasn't until 1976 that it became a bitumen road. Three days of non-stop driving, with a pause in Adelaide, saw us at Brian's parents' place on the north side of Sydney. It was the day before my 26th birthday.

'The Lonely Planet Story: Once While Travelling' by Tony and Maureen Wheeler (Crimson Publishing; www.crimsonpublishing.co.uk) is published on 8 September, priced £9.99.

Tony Wheeler will be appearing at Stanfords bookshop, 12-14 Long Acre, Covent Garden, on Wednesday at 7.30pm.

Tickets are £3, including wine, and should be bought in advance in store, or from 020-7836 1321; sales@stanfords.co.uk.

Rumours of Tony's death have been greatly exaggerated...

My first death, or at least the first place I heard about it, was in Puri, the seaside temple town in the state of Orissa. A group of us were sitting in our hotel's restaurant when a couple said that a week earlier, in the south of India, they'd heard I'd been killed. I forget how I met my end; I think it was in a train crash. We laughed it off, but a couple of weeks later, in Pushkar, another couple told me a similar story, except that the nature of my death was completely different. Again I laughed it off, though hearing you've died once is odd, and twice is a truly remarkable coincidence.

I didn't die again during the rest of my stay in India, but when I got back to Australia letters started to arrive asking if the rumour was true or recounting different versions of my death. Soon I was involved in buses hurtling into ravines in South America, ships going down off Indonesia, motorcycle accidents in China, deadly strains of malaria in Papua New Guinea and even shootouts with the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan.

The rumours became so widespread I eventually alerted my parents to ignore any tales of my death. One of our writers, working on the new edition of China, heard the tale with such certainty (the teller had met someone who had definitely read the account of my death in a newspaper) that he made a two-day trek back to Hong Kong to phone the office to check if the project would still continue without me around!

One day, Maureen, talking to a friend on the phone about the latest version of the tale, was overheard by Tashi, who asked, "Mummy, has Daddy been in a car crash?"

"No, no," joined in Kieran, "he was in a cow crash, not a car crash."

Roger Lascelles, our distributor in London, once heard such a believable version of my death story that he phoned Maureen who, on this occasion, thought something might really have happened to me and called in the middle of the night to check I was alive.

By far the funniest incident occurred in 1988 in a bookshop in Singapore, where I saw a woman holding a copy of South-East Asia on a Shoestring. "I didn't buy it in Sweden because I was sure it would be cheaper here," she said to her friend. "Yes, it's a pity he's dead, isn't it," replied her companion.

Naturally I immediately scotched this rumour, but I thought afterwards they'd be able to go home and recount how they'd seen amazing temples in Burma, fantastic dances in Bali, beautiful beaches in Thailand... and a travel writer rise from the dead in a bookshop in Singapore.

'Two men appeared, both holding rifles...'
By Maureen Wheeler

When people ask us about that first trip, the most common question is: "What was your worst moment?" We have lost things, had things stolen, been scared on recklessly driven buses, and had unpleasant characters annoy us briefly, but nothing really dramatic – except on Turkey's Black Sea coast. We had driven into a deserted park which had a campsite. It was almost dusk, so we decided to cook something then sleep in the van. As we were getting organised, two men appeared, both holding rifles. I was afraid they were soldiers or police and were going to tell us to move on, but they weren't wearing uniforms. They motioned us to go with them; we tried saying, "no thanks", but they were insistent.

They led us along a wooded track and, as we walked, other men appeared. They were talking to each other but we didn't understand anything. Finally, we came to a clearing which seemed to be their camp: there was a hut and fire burning. Our escorts motioned for us to sit down. I was really scared. All our possessions were in the van, and there were a lot of tough-looking men with guns all around us! One man went to the hut and summoned another man who came over, said something, then walked away, returning with tea and bread for us. That was all that happened, and eventually they led us back to our van, but I was really frightened – for a while.

The Lonely Planet timeline

1970
The Wheelers meet on a park bench in London. They marry exactly one year later.

1973
Across Asia on the Cheap, Lonely Planet's first guidebook, sells 1,500 copies. Two reprints follow.

1977
First editions of Lonely Planet's Africa, Australia and New Zealand guides are published.

1988
Baja California, the 100th title, is published.

1991
The first city guides are published, to Singapore and Sydney.

1993
The 200th guidebook is published: South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland.

1995
www.lonelyplanet.com is launched.

1997
The Thorn Tree online travel forum is launched.

1999
The first Europe on a Shoestring is published.

2003
The firm celebrates its 30th birthday with a reprint of the first book (pictured left).

2007
BBC Worldwide buys a 75 per cent stake in the company on 1 October, with plans to develop TV series and the web.

2008
Lonely Planet's mobile website is launched at m.lonelyplanet.com

How Lonely Planet got its name

We ran through dozens of names over bowls of spaghetti and glasses of cheap red wine in an Italian restaurant on Oxford Street in inner-city Sydney before inspiration hit. I'd been humming a line from "Space Captain", the Matthew Moore song sung by Joe Cocker in the rock'n'roll tour film Mad Dogs and Englishmen.

"Once while travelling across the sky," I sang, "this lonely planet caught my eye."

"No," said Maureen, "you've got the words wrong, as usual. It's lovely planet."

She was right. I always got the words wrong, but "lonely planet" sounded much nicer. I sometimes wish we'd come up with a more business-like name, but it's certainly one that people don't forget.

The inside story – how a cover went west

In Lonely Planet's warehouse one sunny afternoon...

1st Warehouse Guy (stacking copies of new book on shelf): How do you spell "western"?

2nd Warehouse Guy: "W-E-S-T-E-R-N".

1st Warehouse Guy: There's an "r" in it?

2nd Warehouse Guy: Sure.

1st Warehouse Guy: Well, looks like somebody messed up.

Later, in a publishing meeting . . .

Steve: How did this happen? Surely somebody should have checked the cover?

Richard: Everybody checked the cover – designers, senior designers, editors, senior editors, Rob [the publisher] – damn it, I even saw it!

John: So what are we going to do? We look pretty dumb if we can't even spell "western".

Anna: Well, we could pulp them, but I don't think we should sacrifice all those trees just for one "r".

Richard: We could sticker them, but unless you get the stickers on really straight it just attracts attention.

Maureen: People peel off the stickers to see what you're trying to hide.

Steve: We could put an "errata" slip in the book, make a bit of a joke about it.

Tony: Make it a bookmark, then at least it's something useful.

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