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

September 29th, 2002

day-240_timber-creek-to-113w-of-timber-creek-nt

Northern Territory: Timber Creek to 113w of Timber Creek

113.4 km today

10844.51 km total

70.3 mi today

6723.2 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

Had coffee with Simon in the morning. Bid goodbye around 10am and I headed out of Timber Creek. About 10k up the road I saw a car with a big yellow kayak on the roof again. Yup, it was Rad again. There were three aboriginal guys with him this time. They needed a ride somewhere up in the territory so he figured he'd give them a ride. We all talked for awhile. One of the Aboriginal guys, Phillip, asked me if I had seen Clint Eastwood or Arnold Schwartzensomething. I said no...just in the movies like them. I said I did see Sylvester Stallone once though and the kinda perked up a little. "Oh, Rambo!". I showed them the clock pictures I drag around with me since they were all taken in the US. I ended up getting a clock photo of everyone standing in the middle of the road.

Road throughout the early afternoon, it was getting a bit hot. Pulled into a arest area and made lunch (noodles, blech). Took a nap and left awhile later. Had a nice but uneventful ride into the night. There is a rest area somewhere ahead, but after 115k I pulled off the road and made camp. There is a nice warm breeze right now. Made dinner consisting of Chinese noodles and a clove of garlic I found at the bottom of my pannier. Today was probably my last full day in the Northern Territory, should be in Western Australia around lunchtime tomorrow.

A shot of my bike, the beer we drank, and some running cows

September 29th, 2002

113.4km

70.3mi