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 22nd, 2003

day-386_port-lincoln-to-n-of-arno-bay-sa

South Australia: Port Lincoln to n of Arno Bay

130.99 km today

18417.28 km total

81.2 mi today

11418.4 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

Ended up reading a little last night thus I ended up sleeping in again this morning. Had breakfast with Kingsley and Raelene...then Raelene headed off to Port Pirie. We all said our goodbyes and I ended up heading out of town a little after 9am. Nice to finally be riding into a tailwind. I'm heading up the eastern side of the Eyre Peninsula now. For awhile this morning I was averaging double what I had been doing on the way to Port Lincoln. Stopped in Tumby Bay and ate lunch by the water. Rode about another 10km and saw a picnic table...I needed to catch up on some sleep. Didn't really fall asleep, the wind and the flies were a bit too much to handle.

The next 80km was more or less uneventful, other than finding three license plates. I haven't had a day like this since the Pilbara in Western Australia. Talked to a couple guys on Harleys pulled over on the side of the rode. One had a broken ignition wire and was fixing it. Turns out these were the only two people I talked to on the ride today.

Was going to do a 170km day, but cut it off at 130km when some bushland started again. Decided I'm goint to catch up on the sleep and see if I can do a 200km day tomororow. Looking to be in Adelaide on Thursday or so, then take clock pictures at this school on Friday. Flies are still everywhere thought they are gradually going to bed as the darkness creeps in. There are a couple huge crows in a tree nearby...just looking at me.

Ok, need sleep...

February 22nd, 2003

130.99km

81.2mi