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

July 2nd, 2002

day-151_lowmead-to-gladstone-qld

Queensland: Lowmead to Gladstone

127.1 km today

5234.46 km total

78.8 mi today

3245.2 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

turned 29 today...first birthday away from the Pacific Time Zone. Mike at the Lowmead Hotel gave me a bottle of wine for my birthday.

It was a nice ride up the dirt road, a lot more interesting than the highway. Took a lot of different photos along the way. Passed a couple of construction guys. They waved to me and asked how it was going. I talked to them awhile and ended up getting a clock picture. People sure are nice up here in Queensland. After the construction guys drove off, a landcruiser pulled up. I had to do a doubletake on the driver, since he looked about ten years old. I waved to him and he looked at me awhile, then turned around and drove off. Reminded me of Short Round from the Indiana Jones movie.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful since I was on the main highway. Decided I needed to see a movie for my birthday so I made a side trip into Gladstone. Months ago I thought I'd be spending my birthday in the middle of the desert south of Darwin, but instead I'm in the industrial town of Gladstone. Went to an all you can eat chinese food place, then went and saw Star Wars.

Actually writing this the on the 3rd in the motel room. Yhere is some kids show on called High Five and the little songs are getting stuck in my head. The songs are of Backstreet Boys quality, argh! Off to Rockhamptom today.

July 2nd, 2002

127.1km

78.8mi