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
It was a pretty nice ride today. I got stood up last night. I was gonna catch a ride with this dude at the caravan park 4km down the road to the bar for a beer. He had to go pick up some friends up the road and said he'd be back in 30-60 minutes. I ended up just reading the Dalai Lama autobio until about 9pm, then got tired so I went to bed.
Cruised out of Makarora and started climbing up the pass. Found a Toni Childs CD on the road. I stashed it in the gutter and saved the gps coordinates...now I can use it as a running joke. (for what I dunno). Been finding a lot of spent shotgun shells on on the side of the road, dont' know what that is about.
Got to the top of Haast Pass. Couldn't really stay long cause the sandflies were biting the crap out of me. For the first time ever the GPS altitude matched the sign altutde, usually they are a bit off. An old car passed me with the license plate "MCGIV0R", ha ha.
It was a nice ride on the other side of the pass. Very green, lots of waterfalls and canyons. There were some pretty amazing litle waterfalls that would probably missed driving by in a car. One of them is probably missed by all the cars, but it was this waterfall shoved into a deep crack probably only about three feet wide. Saw a pizza box for an unnamed pizza company in the gutter, mmm, pizza. What a better way to advertise your business than litter.
Got into Haast and went to the store. The store didn't have good vibe, too many "don't" signs. (no bags please, 20 min purchase for credit card on groceries, on alcohol!). Stayed at the backpackers next door. Lots of tabliod magazines here. Brittney has a new hair doo and Kylie seems to be liking that Oliver dude.