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 14th, 2002

day-163_s-of-proserpine-to-bowen-qld

Queensland: 20k south of Proserpine to Bowen

101 km today

5962.38 km total

62.6 mi today

3696.4 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

Mira and I didn't leave until about 9:00am. A nice couple named Mike and Val offered us a place to stay in Bowen. Mira and I split up at Proserpine since he was going to Airlie Beach. I wasn't going there since I wanted to get farther north...kinda worried about getting through the desert out west before Spring (and the heat) hits. We had stopped at the visitor center and Mira was booking a snorkeling trip on the Great Barrier Reef. It was kinda funny. The guy at the desk was booking the trip on the phone for Mira. He said, "Just a sec and let me ask him....Hey, tommorow there are going to be 100 American students on the boat...is that ok?". Mira said "uh, how about the day after then", kinda chuckling and hoping I wasn't offended. He had a nice imitation of two American girls screaming and saying "OH MY GOD!"

I stopped in Proserpine and had some Quiche. Riding the road through the town, I assumed it would go back to the highway like in most towns...but no, after about 3k a sign said "no through road to Bowen".

It was nice knowing I had a place to stay, since I had to spend the next four hours riding through a headwind. Upon reaching Bowen, I came to "The Big Mango". Australia has a lot of these "Big" things...an older couple is actually writing a tour guide to them.. So far I had only seen the Big Merino and the Big Seashell. (I forgot to see the Big Banana in Coffs Harbor, dang).

Bowen is a nice town of about 8,000 people. Mike showed me around town. "There is the yacht club, out there is Horseshoe Bay, hey there is the mayor (washing his car even)". There are murals all over town, just like Sheffield, Tasmania.

July 14th, 2002

101km

62.6mi