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
Today was a nice short day, I like these, can't belive that many days in Australia were four times longer.
Spent a good part of the morning playing on the trampoline and cable zip swing thing. Made a little mini movie on the zip swing. Mornings are pretty cold now.
The ride to Wanaka was alright, just a nice Sunday morning. The only two songs in my head were the Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning" (good) and that "What about me?" song (bad...thanks Steve Taylor :) )
We passed a German hitchhiker outside of town. "Fucking Bastards" he'd call the people in the caravans. I was going to get a clock picture of him but a car pulled up right after I had all the crap out....so MCQ just took a picture of me with the clock instead.
Rolled into Wanaka, seems like a nice place. Kind of a cool town. We were gonna look for a backpackers and at one point we were going though town and MCQ said, "well, I dunno where we're going...." Right then a guy on the sidewalk said "What are you looking for?" Turns out the guy is named Robin and he runs a backpackers outside of town. The funny thing is that when we said we were from Portland, Oregon; he said, "Ahh, I used to live at 37th and Ash street 11 years ago." Small world. We made arrangements and soon headed there...after ice cream.
The place here is nice, it is basically a house and doesn't feel much like a hostel. There is only one other person staying here, an English girl named Stacy (Stacey?, Staci?). We talked with her awhile and then headed downtown to the cafe/cinema, Enimem's "8-mile" was playing.
The cinema was cool, there was a VW beetle inside the theater that you could sit in, I think it was just reserved for cute young girls that looked to be about 20 who MCQ thought were about 12. The movie was good. We are probably going to hang out here a day or two and then head out.