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
Now I'm back in my tent at the hostel...cool. The YHA had my 4th and final package. The woman asked if I was their post office, yeah...but they didn't have any room so I couldn't stay there dangit.
Day was pretty stressfull, running all around town trying to find a new bite valve for my MSR dromedary bag. Gave up and decided to throw money at the problem and buy a full blown camelback. The upside is that I'll drink more water. Even had to go to the MALL today to dry and get a map of the top end. Everything closes down at 5:30pm in the mall except on Thursdays, where it is open until 9:00pm. How un-american! The bookstore I went to didn't have the map I wanted but by the time I made it to the other one they were closed, yet I could see the map I needed in the dang windown. Now I have to go back there tomorrow. The grocery store was a zoo, I was getting annoyed with people getting in my way. I bought chips and salsa and beer as a stress relief. Glad I had it cause when I got back to the hostel I discovered that my battery charger was no longer working. I'd love to throttle the punk who stole mine from the Caravan Park in Bli Bli on the Sunshine Coast. I ordered it on the net a couple weeks ago and had it sent to my parents house and they sent it to me...and it doesn't work. I thought about throwing anything I had with a computer chip into the trash, but decided things would be working sometime soon. The PCT was a lot different in that I wasn't carrying all this techie stuff...then again, I was hardly ever in towns on the PCT...so being out west will change my perspective a great deal. Every time I get into town I keep remembering something that is broken or screwed up that needs to be fixed...gets annoying after awhile. Hopefully will make it out of town tomorrow, but I might just take it easy for a change also.