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 12th, 2002

day-284_25k-e-of-cb-ex-jct-to-exmouth-wa

Western Australia: 30k e of Exmouth Turnoff to Exmouth

118.3 km today

13646.46 km total

73.3 mi today

8460.5 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

Woke up and had my typical mashed potato (potatoe if yer Dan Quale) and pea breakfast. Oatmeal just ain't cutting it in the morning now.

Had a nice ride to the junction listening to Big Star the whole way. Sat perplexed at the junction trying to decide if I should make the 2 day sidetrip to Exmouth or not. Decided to just go there and be done with it...especially since I'd have a nice tailwind along the way.

It was a really fast ride into Exmouth, average speed was about three times what it has been the past few days. Hopefully the wind will die down on my way back.

Got into Exmouth and settled in at the caravan park/hostel. The "hostel" is basically a shared room in these little container type things that are called "cabins". Now if there were just some chickens running around I could be living it up in style.

Actually did something unlike me...I planned ahead! Signed up for four scuba dives, two tomorrow and two on Friday. Three of the dives are on the Navy Pier which is this big pier that the Navy built in the 60's. Supposed to be one of the best diving spots in Australia. Going snorkelling on Thursday. Neat neat fun fun.

November 12th, 2002

118.3km

73.3mi