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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
January 12th, 2003
day-345_10km-w-of-pemberton-to-35km-nw-of-walpole
Western AustraliaPemberton to 35km nw of Walpole
75.3 km today
15700.29 km total
46.7 mi today
9733.9 mi total

Camped out in the bush tonight. Don't have the really tall trees around me (like I road though earlier) but it is still pretty nice. I'm camped on an (hopefully) unused road. A kangaroo just came bounding down the road and saw my headlamp...then headed off crashing into the bush.

Woke up a few times during the night change batteries over. Woke up in the morning and all my batteries (20 AA!) were charged and I barely remember it. The rain was coming down really hard at times, so it didn't look like I'd be going anywhere today. I ended up staying around the hostel waiting to see what the weather was going to do. Got a couple good clock pictures and some more photos of the resident roos.

I packed up and left the hostel around noon. Ride was mostly uneventful. There is this tall tree near Pemberton called the Gloucester Tree. There is a little lookout tower or something at the top. I shouldda gone yesterday. My whole point was that I was too lazy to ride the 6km out of the way cause it also would have included a huge hill climb. I figure this way I can tell people all about this great tree with a cool tower n Australia and when they ask if I went up in it...I can say no!.

Stopped in Northcliffe for takeaway food, then headed SE along this gravel/dirt road called the Cheseapeke Road. There were signs indicating that the road didn't go through and was closed. I kept biking anyway. As expected, the roads were blocked with a gate, but you would tell where the 4x4's drove around them through the bush. It was a really nice ride on the road....didn't see one car the entire time obviously. It passed between bushland and areas where a few huge trees remained. Stopped around 7:30pm around sunset.

Tomorrow I'll try and get to Denmark and see Anthony and Cynthia. Anthony I met up at the shack (around December 1st-4th). Cynthia I met though Sam and Nadia. I can't remember if I'm suppsed to ask where Anthony lives at the pub or at the tavern. I have it written down somewhere.

January 12th, 2003
75.3km
46.7mi