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.

•••

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

•••

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

•••

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

•••

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 14th, 2003

day-347_walpole-to-denmark-wa

Western Australia: Walpole to Denmark

76 km today

15830.29 km total

47.1 mi today

9814.5 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

Just heard a radio interview where they were interviewing someone from Soap Lake in the Northwest US about a big lava lamp they are building...how funny.

Got up early and went back into Walpole to get some food for today. Ran into the cafe guy again. Met a couple from Melbourne and got a clock picture with them.

Headed out of town towards the Valley of the Giants. This (obviously) is a place where there are a lot of big Tingle and Karri trees. There is a treetop walk in place there. I took the sideroad to it and reached the parking lot. It is a pretty busy place overall. As I was pushing my bike through the parking lot, I passed a family getting out of their car. Mom, Dad, and two boys about age 10. As I walked past I heard one of the kids looking at my bike and say "Stuff that!"

The treetop walk was kind of cool. Only supposed to be 20 people on a span at any given time, seemed to be a few people nervously counting before they got on.

Rest of the day was pretty uneventful. Just a nice ride into Denmark, except for a brutal headwind when I passed a farming area. Hung out in Denmark working on the travel site, then biked to Anthony's house about the time he got off work. Met up with him...good to see a familiar face again. Made plans to meet up with Sam and Nadia's friend Cynthia tomorrow.

Anthony took me out to a shack on some property he has out in the bush, kind of a cool shack and a crazy road to get to. Went and had a couple beers, then to a cafe that his parents just opened. Today was their first day of being open and it went pretty well from what I gathered. Had a nice dinner there and then we came home.

January 14th, 2003

76km

47.1mi