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Maureen Wheeler AO is a Northern Irish and Australian businesswoman, who co-founded the travel publisher Lonely Planet with her husband, Tony Wheeler.
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Maureen Wheeler AO is a Northern Irish and Australian businesswoman, who co-founded the travel publisher Lonely Planet with her husband, Tony Wheeler.
Maureen Wheeler was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and moved to London at the age 20, where she met her future husband, Tony. They travelled from London through Europe and Asia, then on to Australia. That trip resulted in a guidebook Across Asia on the Cheap and laid the foundations of Lonely Planet. [1]
The Wheelers wrote their second book South-East Asia on a Shoestring. Tony Wheeler says: "Although we've continually refined the information organisation, and in 2004 pushed through a complete reorganisation and redesign, the pattern we established with that first serious book has remained remarkably consistent to the present day." [1]
Australia became their permanent home during the 1970s, but Maureen was convinced that they could never support themselves through Lonely Planet and began study at La Trobe University in February 1976 and completed a Bachelor of Social Work in 1980. [1] Afterward, she committed herself full-time to developing the business.
Wheeler says in 1979, "We moved into an office rather than working from our house, we took on a partner (Jim Hart), and we took on the India book which resulted in the biggest book on India that was ever seen. Up until then, there were three of us – all the books were stored in this little tin shed out the back and under the beds and everywhere else. It was a very amateur, home grown business." [2] In 1981, with a staff of ten, Lonely Planet India was published, becoming an immediate best-seller.
After giving birth to her two children, the numerous questions Wheeler received by parents wondering if travel had to be postponed until the children were older, prompted her to write a guidebook. Her years of experience on the road with her children allowed her to write Travel With Children to give advice on how to make travel as stress-free as possible. [3]
Over the next few decades Lonely Planet became a major publishing house, with offices in Melbourne, London and Oakland, over 500 staff members and 300 authors. [4] The company sells six million books each year, 90 per cent overseas. Lonely Planet has printed more than 54 million copies of its 600 guides in 17 languages and has $85 million annual turnover. [5]
Wheeler organised two Lonely Planet travel summits in 1994 and 1997. [6] [7]
Wheeler has been the driving force behind Lonely Planet's corporate contributions programme established to provide financial assistance for humanitarian projects in developing countries. The next step of her philanthropy is in creating the Planet Wheeler Foundation by funding it with money from the sale of Lonely Planet to the BBC. [8]
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La Trobe University is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Its main campus is located in the suburb of Bundoora. The university was established in 1964, becoming the third university in the state of Victoria and the twelfth university in Australia. La Trobe is one of the Australian verdant universities and also part of the Innovative Research Universities group.
Hippie trail is the name given to an overland journey taken by members of the hippie subculture and others from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s travelling from Europe and West Asia through South Asia such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh to Thailand. The hippie trail was a form of alternative tourism, and one of the key elements was travelling as cheaply as possible, mainly to extend the length of time away from home. The term "hippie" became current in the mid-to-late 1960s; "beatnik" was the previous term from the later 1950s.
Lonely Planet is a travel guide book publisher. Founded in Australia in 1973, the company has printed over 150 million books.
Charles La TrobeCB, commonly Latrobe, was appointed in 1839 superintendent of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales and, after the establishment in 1851 of the colony of Victoria, he became its first lieutenant-governor.
La Trobe Street is a major street and thoroughfare in the Melbourne central business district, Victoria, Australia. It runs roughly east–west and forms the northern boundary of the central business district. The street was laid out as an extension of the original Hoddle Grid in 1839 and was named after Charles La Trobe. La Trobe Street extends from Victoria Street in the east to Harbour Esplanade in the west.
John Mansfield Brumby is the current Chancellor of La Trobe University and former Victorian Labor Party politician who was Premier of Victoria from 2007 to 2010. He became leader of the Victorian Labor Party and premier after the resignation of Steve Bracks. He also served as the Minister for Veterans' Affairs and the Minister for Multicultural Affairs. He contested his first election as premier at the November 2010 Victorian state election. His government was defeated by the Liberal/National Coalition led by Ted Baillieu. Brumby resigned as Labor leader after the election, on 30 November, to be replaced by Daniel Andrews. Within weeks of this leadership change, Brumby left parliament, with a Broadmeadows by-election taking place on 19 February 2011.
Icelandic Geographic was a magazine about the nature and people of Iceland, founded by Thordis Hadda Yngvadottir and Ketill Sigurjonsson. The magazine was published between 2002 and 2005.
John Kinley Dewar is an Australian academic. He is the current vice-chancellor of La Trobe University.
Inga Clendinnen, was an Australian author, historian, anthropologist, and academic. Her work focused on social history, and the history of cultural encounters. She was an authority on Aztec civilisation and pre-Columbian ritual human sacrifice. She also wrote about the Holocaust and on first contacts between Indigenous Australians and white explorers. At her death, she was an Emeritus Scholar at La Trobe University, Melbourne.
Tony Wheeler is an English-born Australian publishing entrepreneur, businessman and travel writer, co-founder of the Lonely Planet guidebook company with his wife, Maureen Wheeler.
Jeff Greenwald is a best-selling author, photographer, and monologist. He now resides in Oakland, California.
The Wheeler Centre, originally Centre of Books, Writing and Ideas, is a literary and publishing centre founded as part of Melbourne's bid to be a Unesco Creative City of Literature, which designation it earned in 2008. It is named after its patrons, Tony and Maureen Wheeler, founders of the Lonely Planet travel guides.
Peter "Bruce" Bennetts is an Australian visual artist specialising in architectural photography.
Text Publishing is an independent Australian publisher of fiction and non-fiction, based in Melbourne, Victoria.
Judith Margaret Brett is an Emeritus Professor of politics at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. She retired from La Trobe in 2012, after a restructuring of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in which the School of which she was head was dismantled.
Clare Alice Wright, is an American Australian historian, author and broadcaster. She is a professor of history at La Trobe University, and was the winner of the 2014 Stella Prize. Wright has worked as a political speechwriter, university lecturer, historical consultant, and radio and television broadcaster and podcaster.
Marilyn Anderson is an Australian scientist and entrepreneur in the area of biochemistry and plant molecular biology. She is a professor at La Trobe University and co-founded Hexima, an agribiotechnology company, in 1998.
Margot Ruth Prior was an Australian psychologist, educator, and musician. She was professor of psychology at the University of Melbourne where her research focussed on autism and literacy development. She was also director of psychology at the Royal Children's Hospital and was adjunct professor at La Trobe University.
Geoff Crowther was a British travel writer who wrote for BIT and Lonely Planet.
