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 29th, 2002

day-270_sandfire-roadhouse-to-30k-sw-of-pardoo-roadhouse-wa

Western Australia: Sandfire Roadhouse to 30k sw of Pardoo Roadhouse

160 km today

12564.54 km total

99.2 mi today

7789.7 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

Today was good, got up and going early. Had a really fast ride for most of the day. Even had 100k in before lunch.

Stopped about 45k after sandfire to have breakfast by the side of the road at the 80 mile beach turnoff. A busload of tourists pulled out onto the road...they were all staring at me. All of the sudden the bus lurched to a stop, backed up, and went rocketing back down the dirt road it had just came. Maybe they forgot someone.

Stopped in a nice culvert for an hour and wrote email. Couldn't get Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" out of my head so I started singing it outloud. A German couple stopped. The woman asked if I would like a Coke in a very pronouced accent. She said I couldn't have a beer since it was too hot and I was riding.

The highway went right past a confluence point, so I parked the bike and walked the 300m to the confluence point. I was 99% sure someone had been there, indeed they had. I found a piece of metal wedged into the ground right near the confluence. I took pictures anyway.

Got to the Pardoo Roadhouse in the early evening. Ended up eating two burgers and spending some time writing. Simon pulled up at night. We rode for awhile together and he eventually stopped and camped. I kept going for another 15k or so and parked off in the bush. As I was eating dinner I saw something move by my feet, it was a 5-inch long centipede. Then after that I saw a big spider near me. I have an American Quarter with me, so if I could just find a flea, scorpion, and mushrooms I could have all the elements for a live version of the Centipede video game!

October 29th, 2002

160km

99.2mi