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

October 16th, 2002

day-257_e-of-roebuck-roadhouse-to-broome-wa

Western Australia: 110k e of Broome to Broome

110.3 km today

12074.73 km total

68.4 mi today

7486 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

We got up and going a little late. It was getting hot and the ride into the Roebuck Roadhouse seemed a lot longer than it was. The last part up to the roadhouse was this hill that never seemed to end...and it wasn't even a steep one.

Spent awhile at the roadhouse eating and reading. We met some people heading into Broome and started talking to them. I told them about last night when we ran into Bucko and Mushy and their messed up car. The guy said "was it a yellow Datsun?.....we stole a fan belt off that car!".

Grub and I helped some Aboriginals get their car going. We spent about 20 minutes trying to get it push started. Eventually the guy took a bunch of duct tape off the steering column and the whole works dumped out. He fiddled with a couple wires. We gave it another push and the car started. He taped the whole works back into the steering column...thanked us and they all drove off.

We all rolled into Broome in the early evening and went to the bar. Drank a bunch of beer and I made my way to the hostel. Mail mail mail and mail! Maree mailed me some candy, puzzles and a book. Steve & Katrina mailed me cookies and 3 MP3 cd's of Australian music, MCQ in Portland mailed me a Lucky Lab t-shirt and new cleats, and Ron from Mackay mailed me some comfy Shimano sandles...no more smelly feet.

October 16th, 2002

110.3km

68.4mi