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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.
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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
June 27th, 2002
day-146_rainbow-bay-to-maryborough
QueenslandRainbow Beach to Maryborough
106 km today
4883.96 km total
65.7 mi today
3027.9 mi total

I thought today was going to be pretty unusual, but it ended up being pretty regular.

My tire didn't look that good at all so I lined it with some more money...literally throwing money at the problem. I had stopped at a gas station to clean sand out my shifter. A guy walked over and stared at my tire...saying it was one of the oddest things he had ever seen. This was the first time I had ever actually used money to fix a blowout. I had heard it could be done...it actually works. Much like the time on the PCT when I didn't have my stuff with me for one night and had to use newspaper for a blanket.

I mailed some stuff out and didn't get out of town until 11:00am or so, bike making a click click click noise as the money kept hitting the fork. About 3k from town I heard a click click click rub rub rub...kaboom! The tube and blown apart, taking with it Henry Parks and Catherine Helen Spence...the two people on an Australian Five Dollar note.

I figured I'd probably have to ditch the bike in town and hitchhike to Gympie to get more tires. I tried my small tire once more and managed to get it working without the tube blowing.

After that the rest of the day was pretty uneventful sans stopping at a fruit stand for a lunch of green grapes. The rest of the ride was through state forest, which was basically tree farms. Everything was straight, the trees, the rows that the trees were in, the roads inbetween the trees, and the highway I was on. Had to have gone about 10-15 miles before I even turned at one point.

Rolled into Maryborough about 5:30pm. Missed the bike shop by about 30 minutes. Found the caravan park and the woman suggested I go to the Royal Hotel, since they had a $5.50 all you can eat. The food was food and that is about it.

June 27th, 2002
106km
65.7mi