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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.
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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
April 1st, 2003
day-424_auckland-airport-nz
New ZealandChristchurch
0 km today
20166.39 km total
0.0 mi today
12504.7 mi total

Haven't really slept at this point but it is daylight again so it warrants a new day on this site.

Did sleep a little on one of the benches. My laptop bag at my head and the bike making a nice little wall on the other side.

Turns out they forgot to charge me for excess baggage on the way to Auckland...cause I had to pay for it this time. Waited and waited till 9:30am when I got on the plane to Christchurch. The flight was alright. Getting off the plane, four the fourth time now the stewardesses all acted the same. "Thank you...thank you....thank you very much....uh.....". I they'd just look at me and I'd smile and they wouldn't say anything.

Walked into the airport and no MCQ. Then I realized this was past the security checkpoint so he might be downstairs. I came down the stairs and there he was holding a little "Craig" sign. Funny, we didn't even greet each other at first, the first thing we both did was pull out our little digital cameras and take pictures of each other. So good to see a familiar face. We spent an hour or two at the airport while I put my bike back together. Stopped at a fish and chips shop on the way to the holiday park. Yummy! Pulled into the caravan park and talked awhile, then I slept slept slept slept. Somehow I woke up several hours later and then we went to the stoore. VB is half the price compared to Australia! Wow!

Went back to the HP and made a big stir fry and I drank my first beer in New Zealand. Making sure this time to buy cans so I could give my Dad the can. We are taking tomorrow off also, I need more sleep anyway.

2020-4-19 update:
This was the part where my friend MCQ joined the journey. I had this photo (taken in May 2003) on the front of this website at one point.:

April 1st, 2003
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