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

November 2nd, 2002

day-274_port-hedland-to-60k-sw-of-ph-wa

Western Australia: Port Hedland to 60k sw of PH

73.2 km today

12788.13 km total

45.4 mi today

7928.4 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

I'm sitting here in a rest area listening to a car far away playing the Oak Ridge Boys, they just finished with the Best of Queen album.

Farted around the hostel a bit this morning. Had all my crap spread out so it took awhile to get it packed up. The tour bus (the same tour I thought about taking) ended up breaking down and the mechanic had to bring everyone back. Maybe it is good that I didn't choose to go. Didn't look like the tugboat guy was going to come by so I headed out.

On the way out of town I swung by the hostel where Simon was at...he is leaving tomorrow. I made my way out of Port Hedland....although I did have to crash into a curb at 5km/hr since I wasn't paying attention and reading a sign. Did't wipe out though.

About 30k out of town there was an Aboriginal couple pulled off to the side of the road. One yelled at me asking if I had a phone. I didn't but went over to their side of the road anyway and talked. They gave me a beer from the back and told me to lean my bike up against the car and rest. Most interesting part was this conversation between the couple:

p1: "I can't have meat today...I'm Catholic"

p2: "You are? I'm an Atheist"

p1: "No, you're an Asshole"

I chuckled...they tried their car again and it started. The guy gave me another beer and they drove off. I didn't drink the second beer, the first one was already making me feel poopy. I rode another 25k or so and called it a day at the camping/rest area. Been writing overdue emails for the last three hours, good thing I have 5 laptop batteries again!

November 2nd, 2002

73.2km

45.4mi