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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.
•••

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 4th, 2002
day-3_melbourne-vic
VictoriaLos Angeles -> Malaysia to Melbourne / St. Kilda
41.3 km today
41.3 km total
25.6 mi today
25.6 mi total

Looked out the plane window and there was Australia! We were passing over the west coast and I didn't want to see it...would rather see it from my bike as to not spoil the suprise.

Landed and made my way through customs. They are concerned with foot and mouth disease so the guy asked me about the tires on my bike. I said that they were brand new and had never been on a road. He gave me the first "no worries" I would hear in Australia, and told me to go through the green line.

Threw the bike back together and rolled out of the airport. Took forever to get it back together, mostly because I had to somehow get all this extra crap onto the bike...stuff that I would most likely get rid of. Had to stop are swap my rearviewmirror to the other side...they drive on the left here, forgot about that. Had a nerve-wracking ride through the Melbourne suburbs. Got my first flat tire before I even got into Melbourne proper. First days are the hardest, just like the song goes.

Eventually found my way to the hostel in St. Kilda (south of Melbourne) and went to sleep.

February 4th, 2002
41.3km
25.6mi