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.
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).
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.
Craig
Around 4:30 am this morning I heard someone say "Craig...". It was Ben, who was taking me fishing. I introduced myself from my comfy sleeping bag. His brother Abe was going also. All three of us piled into the ute, me of course first trying to get into the passenger seat on the right side of the vehicle, then remember the passenger seat is on the left. Funny how I'm so used to riding on the left side of the road, but since I've been in so few vehicles over the ast year, I still can't get used to this right hand drve stuff.
We drove our way twoards the beach, many kangaroos jumping madly all about in front of us. Sometime later we were out on the ocean fishing away. I caught my first fish, dunno what it was but I threw it back. It cut me with one of it's dorsal fins. A pod of dolphins came up to us and followed the bow of the boat for awhile, that was pretty cool. I ended up catching a fish that bas big enough to keep, my first even saltwater fish I've caught.
Ended up back at the house around 10am. I didn't get enough sleep so I started to fall alsleep half watching the spiderman movie. Watched Serdipity" a bit later.
Went to the pub and helped Louise out in the kitchen over there. The pub was a bit busy, so I made the lasange while they went about making the meals for the pub. After an hour or two in the kitche we headed back...this time with a pan of yummy cooked lasange.
Spent the evining talking to everyone. Kevin's younger brother Rob came over, I'm going fishing with him tomoorrow. Dunno if I'll head out tomorrow or not. These daysoff have been good. I'm still a bit apprenhensive about taking time off, since it might end up eating into my New Zealand time, and we can't possibly have that.