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

August 1st, 2002

day-181_cape-tribulation-to-mossman

Queensland: Cape Tribulation to Mossman

70 km today

7163.13 km total

43.4 mi today

4440.8 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

Hmm...there are five quite giggling girls in their 20's behind me, all squesezed into a tent and I'm in my tent on the laptop. oh well

Today started out pretty rough, I was feeling pretty sick, but not to the point of taking a rest day. Apparently someone last night was banging on all the doors since he got drunk and didn't have his key for the hostel room. An older couple asked me if I was that guy, then the hostel manager asked me. Hopefully they will find the noisy bloke.

Must have drank almost a gallon of Orange Juice today, trying to fight off my cold. It took me a long time to climb up the hills and my pace was pretty slow. I wasn't in too good of mood at all, tired of feeling sick, thinking about my broken hub, etc. Eventually I got up over the hill and dropped down to the Daintree River. The guy running the ferry boat asked me where I was going/had been, etc. Right as I was getting off I asked him how much I owed. He just said "nah, you'd be better off applying that money towards a cold beer". What a nice guy.

Evenentually pulled into a gas station and ended up resting there awhile. Called the bike shop...seems we can work something out. I felt a little better after talking to them...knowing it might not be a total fiasco in getting a new hub.

Got into Mossman and decided to stay there, kinda take it easy on my body. At the Caravan Park I met this other cyclist named Dale. He was my age and biking up to the tip of Cape York. Even took a few clock photos around the caravan park...has to be the most amount of clock photos I've taken in a month or two.

Tomorrow is Cairns, where I hope to go diving if my cold gets better.

August 1st, 2002

70km

43.4mi