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

August 3rd, 2002

day-183_cairns-qld

Queensland: Cairns

0 km today

7241.13 km total

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4489.2 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

Hung around the tracks hostel today. The bike shop was cool about my rear wheel. They ended up giving me a different hub and rebuilt a new wheel around it. It was a lot less hassle than I thought it was going to be. I was all prepared for a big hassle, but they just said "what do you want us to do to fix it?" After I left the shop I noticed my shifter wasn't working. I dunno if they messed it up or if it was just going out. Went up to the other bikeshop and ended up ordering a smattering of bike parts. Looks like I'll have a whole new handlebar setup with an extra gear and v-brakes.

Called up Peter (who I met at the Palmer River Roadhouse) and made plans to stay at his place. Mr. Annoying Find Fault with Everything I do guy was at the hostel again. This time he wondered what was wrong with my laptop screen, couldn't figure out why I just didn't use one of the hostel computers, laughed and walked off. Geez he annoyed the hell out of me. Actually, I didn't mention him before. He was this guy staying at the hostel who kept getting on my case about everything I did. First he complained that I was always was doing something (well I am biking around Australia), then he couldn't figure out why I had such a small tent, then he couldn't figure out why I would carry a small tent to save weight, yet carry a laptop. I seem to meet one of these types of people every trip, though this guy was only about 1/10th as an asshole as that guy I met on the PCT. (Hi Bob!)

Biked to Peter's house in the evening. He had a spare bedroom and everything, so I got all settled in. Was kind of nice to have a quiet place to be grounded while I did my scuba class. (thanks again Peter!). That night we all watched "footy" (rugby) on the TV. Australia vs. New Zealand, was a pretty big game. Was a good game although I couln't figure out the rules. At one point a couple of streakers ran across the field during a timeout.

August 3rd, 2002

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