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

•••

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

•••

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

•••

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 11th, 2003

day-434_lake-ohau-to-omarama

New Zealand: Lake Ohau to Omarama

35 km today

20602.48 km total

21.7 mi today

12775.6 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

Woke up and made coffee. John soon came by. I noticed he didn't have his tools and stuff with him to help break the lock. Then MCQ said...ah, I was just joking...I found the key last night. he he. Turns out MCQ and I were camped pretty much in the middle of the locals daily walkpath. It didn't look like much of one, but indeed we were.

Got packed up and headed out. John was out on his morning walk and was going by when I reached the road. I biked along at 3km/hr while he walked. Pretty soon MCQ caught up and we bid goodbye to John and were on our way. The ride to Omarama was uneventful. Got to town and got a cabin. The German couple we met a few days ago is here also. I talked to the girl for awhile and mentioned how I met that really competive German guy I met in Australia.. I told her how this guy gave me a complete rundown of nearly every town he'd been though over the last 6,000km. She left and said that was "very German".

I went into the TV room at the caravan park to do something I don't do a lot...watch TV. The news was on and these two little girls came in and sat down. They didn't say anything to me, just kept saying "I don't like the news, I don't want ot watch the news" to themselves over and over. I kept watching the news to annoy them since they were being unladylike. They left and two other kids came in and sat down, I told them I wasn't watching the TV and they could watch whatever was on the other channel (only two channels here). The kid asked where I was from. When I said America, he of course asked if I saw the WTC blow up...that seems to be the most common question from kids when they find out you are from the USA.

Spent the rest of the night working on the clock site. What a lot of typing for not really a whole lot going on...hope you enjoyed it.

Later that night

April 11th, 2003

35km

21.7mi