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

February 5th, 2003

day-369_15km-e-of-sa-wa-border-to-128km-w-of-nullabor-roadhouse

Western Australia: 15km e of WA/SA Border to 128km w of Nullabor Roadhouse

46.81 km today

17389.54 km total

29.0 mi today

10781.2 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

Woke up late and got going even later. Was excited to get out on the road, but that soon changed...major headwind. Pace was cut in half just about. Hard to keep the spirts and speed up with this much of a headwind. Had I been biking with someone else I might have had more motivation. AIt is really hard to think positive in a strong headwind. All that happens are bad thoughts. (like how that trucker yesterday asked me if I was related to "that George Bush."

I wasn't irked at the truckie, just irked that I can't get away from GW. Like most people down here though, I really hope he doesn't get his war, cugh, no more on him. This is supposed to be a happy site where everything is all happy and stuff)

After 20km I turned off the road and headed for the cliffs. These cliffs are amazing, Australia just "ends" here, no beaches or anything, just a giant cliff. I ended up taking a nap there for an hour or so.

Got going again hoping the wind wouldn't be as bad and I could be in a better mood...nope. The next 25km drug along. I had to keep watching my rearviewmirror for road trains. I couldn't hear them coming until the last few seconds because of the wind. At one point the wind knocked me off the road into the gravel, where my front wheel skidded and I fell back onto the road. Got my leg down in time so I didn't fall over.

Only real interesting thing that happneed today was when I saw two dingos. One looked at me and then trotted across the road, the other one soon following. Got some video of it.

Got to about the 45km mark and decided to call it a day. Maybe if I get an earlier start tomorrow the wind won't be as bad...and I'll be in a better mood.

February 5th, 2003

46.81km

29.0mi