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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 25th, 2002
day-205_40k-w-of-nt-border-to-100k-se-of-borroloola-nt
Northern Territory30k w of NT/QLD border to 100k se of Borroloola
120 km today
8698.54 km total
74.4 mi today
5392.8 mi total

Today ended up being pretty good. Got up early and was rolling down the road. I was really lacking food, so it looked like I'd only get two meals today. Got a flat tire around 11:00am and decided that would also make a good "brunch" stop. Food was plain pasta and rice with some vegemite thrown in. Road revolved between being good and being crappy. Had to get my feet wet in the Calvert River...the horror!

Towards the mid afternoon the road got really terrible. It wasn't corrugated, but had a good couple inches of this dust on it that made me almost fall over a couple times. I got off the bike and started pushing because it was easier than trying to balance on that stuff. A ute pulled up next to mee and slowed down. I waved and the guy stopped. He got out of the ute and looked at me..and said "fucking bloody hell!, you are about the last thing I'd expect to see all the way out here!". He offered me a beer but I declined. Lacking food and it being hot I didn't want to mess myself up. He said that he and two other guys were camping up at the Robinson River, but that was about 50k away and I probably wouldn't make it there tonight. I told him I'd make it if the road got better.

Knowning that I could make it to the river before dark my spirts perked up a little. Eventually the crappy road got better and it was rideable. I got another flat tire awhile later, same old typical snakebyte puncture. Really needed to eat something so I nibbled a little more on the remainder of my chocolate bar and ate the remainder of my vegemite with my fingers. Got into a good crusing speed and eventually reached the river about 6pm. Found the place where the guys were camped and set my bike up next to a tree. The one guy looked a little suprised when he saw me. I said "how ya going...ok...I'll take you up on your beer offer now!" They were up here on a fishing trip, Ben, Mick and Nick. They were getting ready to make dinner and asked me to join them. This worked out good since I was low on food anyway. Had a "backup dinner" as mick called it...since they didn't catch any fish today. Ended up having a few beers with them and we talked for a few good hours, telling all kinds of crazy stories..a nice end to a long and pretty demanding day. Tomorrow I got to the town I always have to look up how to spell it...Borroloola.

August 25th, 2002
120km
74.4mi