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
Got out of the carvan park a whole 30 minutes earlier than normal, yay! Had a really fast ride for the first 60k or so. Grubby stopped and turned around. He found a People magazine on the side of the road. This isn't People magazine like in the US, down here People magazine is a boobs n butts magazine. (The AU equiv.of the US People magazine is called Who). We stopped at the Laura River bridge and spent a couple hours underneath it eating, sleeping, and me dragging wood around to make a clock photo.
Slowed up a little for the rest of the day. Ended up at a rest stop called Mary's Pool. No water here, the info center gave us bunk information. We were able to get some off of some other people staying here. One of the couples is from Broome. He said that in about 6 weeks it will be getting up to 56c out on the highway south of Broome, good thing I'll be getting through there before then. The other people we got water from were from Canada, Holland, and Switzerland. They met Simon a couple hours ago in Halls Creek. They said all the Aboriginal kids were having fun chasing him on his recumbent bike. With him a day behind us we should all meet up in Fitzroy Crossing...cool.