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.
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).
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.
Craig
Had a pretty nice day overall. Got lost a little in the burbs out of Maitland. Went by a school and kid about ten walked right up to me and started asking me all kinds of questions. This is very unual for kids this age. He asked where I was from and about September 11th. This kid is going places...every other kid his age I've came across are the type that just kinds of sit back and snicker .
Rode through a lot of nice towns with friendly people (especially Clarencetown). The countryside was nice. Looks like it was a wise move to get a veggie burger in Clarencetown and stay there awhile...because about 20k afterwards the ground was all wet.
Didn't really know where I was going to stay tonight...just kept biking figuring the problem would take care of itself. It did because I got to the lonely gas station at Bollora, I saw a sign for a YHA and an arrow. I had to do a doubletake...a YHA out here? Granted had I bothered looking at my YHA map I could have noticed this days ago, but it was buried in my bag and I never really paid any attention to it unless I stumbled across it. Ran into the guy who ran the hostel about 10k from it....he told me to wait at his farm and he'd probably be there by the time I got there.
I got to this hostel and it was this tiny building in the woods. I took a few pictures for the clock site with the cows while I waited. The cows were waiting for their daily bread...really. The owner fed them leftover bread ends from the bakery.
The hostel is awesome. It is this tiny building tha tused to be a one room school house..and I had it all to myself. A woman eventually drove up. She came in and said "oh...this is it???". I said "yeah...what is wrong with it?". It wasn't like a normal hostel (big, many rooms, signs everywhere, buttload of tour guide brouchures, annoying female models who won't quit flirting with you). She ended up leaving after not finding where the hot showers were. I didn't know where the shower was, I thought it was just this changing room that had a small bowl and a cold water faucet in it. Geez, even rich well to do people in 1850 didn't have it this easy.
The rain came down again, this time pretty hard and I sat out on the front porch glad to be out of it.