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 22nd, 2002

day-294_s-of-minilya-roadhouse-to-carnarvon-wa

Western Australia: s of Minilya Roadhouse to Carnarvon

133.73 km today

14062.61 km total

82.9 mi today

8718.5 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

Today was a long day. I wanted to get to the post office before they closed since Maree sent me some stuff there. I rode really hard and didn't take much time off, only to get to the post office 20 minutes after they closed. Bummer.

Carnarvon will be the westernmost point in Australia I will get. Steep point is a bit further west, but it is way out of my way. It was really windy and I was quite tired. I rode around a little figuring out where I was going to stay. I went past the Carnarvon Backpackers' and saw Simon in the parking lot talking on his phone. Turns out he was in Coral Bay on the Tuesday that I was there, but didn't have a chance to email me due to his unfortunate circumstances of having to have a few beers with a cute dutch girl. If Simon is 30 and the girl was 19, that makes him 11 years older than her, way to go Simon!

Dunno yet if I'm going to take tomorrow off or keep going, I don't really seem to like this town too much, maybe it is the wind or that I'm pretty tired.

November 22nd, 2002

133.73km

82.9mi