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

December 11th, 2002

day-313_perth-wa

Western Australia: Perth

0 km today

15036.47 km total

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9322.2 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

Spent the day going around town doing errands. Have to get my US passport renewed in addition to getting a renewal on my Australian visa. Going to the US consolate was a lot like visiting Fort Knox.

Got the passport stuff taken care of and walked up the street. After bidding so long to Andy last night....I run into Andy and his Father.

Walked up Hay street, got the new Richard Buckner! It is out now down here, that is cool. Also exciting is that I found a place that does backpack repair and I was able to get to big fat zippers to replace my broken ones. (Hey, when broken zippers have been ticking you off every day for a couple months, you'd be downright excited too.

Made plans to meet up with Sam later tonight. I called him on his mobile and he said "Where are you?" U told him I was in front of the Aberdeen Lodge on the payphone. turns out he was standing right next to me. I've always wanted to have a conversation like that...now I have. Talked with Sam for a long while..we have a lot in common. An older guy eyed me and walked straight over to me. he interrupted us saying..."Hey, really sorry to interrupt but I just wanted to say I love that band". I was wearing the blue husker Du t-shirt. Cool.

Did some more computer work and crashed out. Someone has their phone plugged into one of the two electrical outlets in the room, I lost my monopoly. (my laptop in one, battery charger in the other)

December 11th, 2002

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