Homepage
Twitter
Instagram
Email
NiteMode
DayMode
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
•••
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
•••
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
•••

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
June 23rd, 2002
day-142_brisbane-to-landsborough-qld
QueenslandAshgrove / Brisbane to Landsborough
102.4 km today
4611.2 km total
63.5 mi today
2858.8 mi total

Greetings from the Tranquil Landerborough Pines Caravan Park.

Today was one of those days where you kind of plan it out and then the unexpected happens.

Went to put sugar on my museli this morning and instead I discovered the hard way that it was salt.

Left Simona's (thanks again!) and headed north out of town. The suburbs to the north were not that bad after all. After about 20k I met up with some cyclists out for a Sunday ride. I rode with them for a way and some of them headed another direction. A few of us continued north and I rode with them. This was actually the first time of the whole trip where I've actually ridden with other bikers for longer than 15 minutes, pretty nice. One of them suggested we go to his house for some coffee and we did just that.

I noticed my pace was a lot faster and I wasn't tired. It is a lot easier to keep a fast pace if someone is riding alongside of you.

It ended up just being Paul, Kate and I riding north. We stopped at a take-away place for lunch and then I bid goodbye to them. I passed the Zoo where all the Crocodile Hunter stuff takes place, got a few photos there. It was pushing my 4:30pm cutoff time so I just decided to stay at the caravan park rather than try and make it to the coast. I wasn't planning on going to the zoo, but then decided I'm going to go tomorrow so I can see a bunch of different critters. Plus, it will be a Monday so it shouldn't be a human zoo. The woman at the caravan park said I can leave my tent and non-valuable junk like that at the park while I go to the zoo. That is the one downside of bike touring, gotta worry about the bike all the time. Haven't seen any Koalas or Crocs yet...so I'll get to tomorrow.

June 23rd, 2002
102.4km
63.5mi