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
MCQ and I got up late. The guy we had met a couple nights ago was passing through. We talked to him for quite a while and he asked what we were doing today. MCQ wasn't feeling hot so we were planning on just going to the next town and getting a cabin. We continued to talk and he found out that we didn't go to Mt. Cook. He offered to drive us up there for the day so we took him up on it. I grabbed my valuable stuff and we headed out about an hour later. MCQ and I made bets on what the guy's name was, John was MCQ's second choice and that is indeed what it was.
It was a nice drive up to Mt. Cook. It felt a little odd though seeing all the wonderful mountains though a window though, I felt like I really needed to be on the bike. Got to the lodge thingy that they have built there. The inside of it feels and looks exactly like a sterile downtown office building, not a lodge near Mt. Cook. John said this is how a lot of the locals all feel about it too. Internet was $16 an hour there, amazing. The food in the cafeteria didn't look the best either, so I just had a muffin. John said it was pretty quiet there today, usually there are busses and people everywhere. We hiked around a bit. It made me a little homesick for the NW USA since there were big mountains everywhere.
We headed back and had dinner in Twizel. John told MCQ and I all kinds of stories about the area and history in New Zealand. Got back to camp to get settled in for the night. MCQ couldn't find his bike key so he couldn't unlock his bike from mine. I wasn't too worried because I knew we could just borrow John's car jack and break it that way...then again it wasn't my lock either.
MCQ and I played Yahtzee and Farkel (another dice game) then soon crashed out.