Tony Wheeler

Tony Wheeler (born 20 December 1946) is an English-born Australian publishing entrepreneur, businessman and travel writer, co-founder of the Lonely Planet guidebook company with his wife, Maureen Wheeler. Born in England, his father worked for the British Overseas Airways Corporation as an airport manager, so he grew up in Pakistan, the Bahamas, Canada, the United States and England, never spending as much as two years in the same school. Wheeler holds an engineering degree from Warwick University and an MBA from London Business School. He was an engineer at the Chrysler corporation. After travelling across Europe with Maureen Wheeler, they arrived in Melbourne in 1972 and put out their first book, Across Asia on the Cheap in 1973. This would grow into the Lonely Planet empire, a name derived from a misheard Joe Cocker song (the lyric was, in fact, "lovely planet"). They married and had two children, Tashi and Kieran.