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Biking Around Australia

Between February 2002 and March 2003 I circumnavigated 12,504 miles around the Australian continent on my bicycle, or push bike as they say there. After that I went to New Zealand for three months and met up with a friend and ended up pushing the total mileage to 14,115.7 miles (22717.02 km). I spent 269 days on my bike, 272 days not on my bike, and getting 67 flat tires over those 17 months.

This is the route I took around Australia. Every few days I would update this YHA map with a marker and the route I more or less made up as I went along.
•••

I started and ended my 13 month lap around Australia at Luna Park in St. Kilda/Melbourne.. The distance around Australia (including Tasmania) ended up being about 20,281km (12,600 miles).

February 12th, 2002 - 3:50pm
March 12th, 2003 - 3:12pm
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I carried a 15 pound IBM Thinkpad 600E with five batteries over the course of the entire trip in order to keep this website updated on a weekly basis so people back home could follow me on my travels. I had a system setup where I'd back the photos up to CDs and mail them home every few weeks. To update the site, I primarily did it with 3.5 inch floppy disks. There are 542 daily journal entries on here. I redid the website in 2020 so it would show up on phones and such ok. I took 36,304 photos over the 17 months and 12321 of them ended up here on this website. As for the words, there are 119527 of them for you to read. I didn't start active journaling until a couple months into the journey. I've noted where I've added journal entries way after the fact based on recollections or notes I had from the time. Some people have actually read the the entire site and have seen every picture. Some entries were written the same day, others were not. Some entires are a thought-provoking and a wholly entertaining read, others are downright boring.
Lunky.com website 2001-2020


The MS Paint image I updated every few days
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Also during the journey I carried a cardboard "clock" for this website I had started a year earlier called The Human Clock. Here it is on the Queensland/Northern Territory border
The Human Clock website was pretty popular then and it plus my bike trip got a quick blurb in the Sunday Times of London in September of 2002
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One fun thing I did during my trip was to visit six "confluences", which is where a whole-numbered latitude/longitude mark intersects for The Degree Confluence Project.

This was also back when the GPS looked nice
Standing at 18°S 142°E
Thanks for reading!
Craig
October 3rd, 2002
day-244_25k-w-of-kununarra-to-doon-doon-wa
Western Australia25k w of Kununarra to Doon Doon
98.6 km today
11093.17 km total
61.1 mi today
6877.3 mi total

Welp, didn't get up early, same old time as usual. Actually woke up right before my alarm at 3:30am, but through some logic convinced myself to go back to sleep. Biked about 10k up the road and realized I had forgotten my camelback at the camp. Argh...going to be a long morning.

At the road junction now, still really want to bike on the dirt road, but it really would't be a good idea, don't have the tires for it and I'd have to mail some of this excess weight round. Plus it is 100F right now outside though it feels like 90.

(awhile later...)

Met this guy named Grubby at the rest area. He had met Simon a few days earlier. We talked awhile and he headed down the road. I met back up with him at the next rest area. My thermometer showed it was 115F but it didn't seem that hot, can't really tell anymore. We headed out in the late afternoon. A couple hours later we reached the brand new roadhouse at Doon Doon. There was a combie bus with three people in it, I ended up getting clock pics with them. Grubby and I camped behind the roadhouse...spent half the night trading geek stories. I tried telling him my favorite jokes, but he knew them all....Simon had told all my jokes to him a couple days earlier, bugger.

Biking on the highway and a couple shots of passing road trains at dusk
October 3rd, 2002
98.6km
61.1mi