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 19th, 2003

day-352_ongerup-to-fitzgerald-np-wa

Western Australia: Ongerup to Fitzgerald NP

134.5 km today

16224.88 km total

83.4 mi today

10059.2 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

Another kinda-sorta big day. Woke up a tad hungover from last night. Didn't get a lot of sleep because I kept hearing something under my tarp moving around. It was making a scratching noise, just like a mouse or large bug would. I looked and looked, but could only conclude it was wind blowing though the tarp in a weird fashion.

A strong wind was blowing from the west...a tailwind! Ate breakfast and left around 10am. Two hours later I was in Jerramungup, it was a really fast 40km. Since that it was Sunday, everything was closed except the gas station on the highway. I hung out there awhile...fixed another broken spoke.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. Some surfer guys passed me with one leaning out the window saying "yeahhhhh". Much better than those damn cars the start honking when they are behind you. Passed a rest area with swings...so I had to stop. After about 1min of swinging, I started getting a little woozy. (and I thought my parents were being party poopers by not swinging with me as a kid, now I know why).

About 40km before Ravensthorpe, I passed the turnoff to Fitzgerald NP. I glanced at the map and saw that the unsealed road would be about the same distance. Without even really thinking I just started down this road. The map I have doesn't have this area in great detail so I'm having to wing it a bit. The moon is nice and full over the treeless plain right now. Saw a bunch of kangaroos this evening. Now my only issue is getting attacked my a mouse, gotta go.

January 19th, 2003

134.5km

83.4mi