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
I've been gone a year, plus or minus all that time change stuff.
Today was pretty uneventful, just a lot of headwind. Rode a little over eight hours and did 106km. The morning dragged on. Didn't get to the Caliguna Roadhouse until 11:30am, and that was after a good 30 minutes of taking pictures at the sign at the other end of the big long 146km straightaway. Had a burger and chips at the roadhouse, read the entire newspaper. Seems Bush is all hot to go into Iraq. Roadhouse is expensive as usual. Hopefully I don't run out of food, cause it doesn't look like any of these roadhouses have food-food for sale.
Talked to a couple truckies outside for awhile, nice guys. They mentioned a couple trukcing related things and I said "yeah...I read that in Big Rigs awhile back" Seems all those months of reading the trucking magazine at roadhouses finally paid off.
The next 60km was slow. Had to stop a couple times and just rest cause the wind was really taking it out of me. The noise was one of the worst things. If that wasn't enough noise, my pedals keep making that annyoning click click sound, argh.
Got to the Cocklebiddy roadhouse after dark. The roadhouse ust hovered there on the horizon for 20 minutes as I battled a good headwind. Got a bit annoyhing after awhile.
There was a 45 minute time gain on the way here, which meant I couldn't order food. Met a guy out front. I talked about getting a beer and he said to just go into the fridge of Room #6 and grab one...since it was pretty steep priced in the bar. As we were out front, a drunk couple comes by. The woman sees my bike and said "Hold on...I just wanna have a feel". Before she goes to lift my bike the guy she was with said "Dammit! Go to the motel room and I'll give you a feel". She drunkenly moved the bike back and forth and then leaned it up against a wall. I got a premade sandwich and a $2.50 kit kat bar, then a package of cookies (almost all gone). Left the road house and "pissed off into the bush" as they say. Dunno how far I'll go tomorrow, pretty tired now.