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

June 3rd, 2003

day-487_franz-joseph-glacier-to-okarito

New Zealand: Franz Joseph Glacier to Okarito

30 km today

21504.52 km total

18.6 mi today

13336.2 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

Woke up, feet and knees hurt. Doddled around the hostel for awhile planning to take the day off. After moving around for awhile I started getting restless and decided to just pack up and jet to Okarito. Packed up, went and nerded out for awhile in the "internet bus". I only had to go about 30km today so I wasn't in any hurry to get out of town. Talked to this guy Dean from the hostel in front of the grocery store for a long while. Thanksfully I had my marking pens with me so I could get an instant clock photo of him via his shopping bags.

Cruised out of town...left knee was hurting already. It was a pretty easy ride to Okarito. Okarito is a small settlement on the coast, just a handful of houses, a sea kayaking business and the hostel. The hostel is an old schoolhouse. Okarito used to be a huge thriving town a long time ago. Now it is this nice quiet little place. The people here seem to like it this way. I'd heard down in Fox Glacier that the bastard developers have already tried polluting this area. (Sorry, I don't buy the mentality that every nice quaint little place in the world "needs" a big resort).

Went out for a walk on the beach and came back to the hostel. There was a note on the table saying that the Okarito Community Association was having a potluck at the hostel tonight and I was invitied. Yay! About 90 minutes later there were about 20 people in the hostel. Had some yummy food and talked with all the people.

June 3rd, 2003

30km

18.6mi