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 12th, 2003

day-496_okarito-to-s-of-ross-new-zealand

New Zealand: Okarito to s of Ross

90 km today

21594.52 km total

55.9 mi today

13392.1 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

Was up till about 3am last night working on the clock site. Did a bunch of mods to the backend and stuff was all broken...so I couldn't get in any new clock pics. Got that sorted and went to bed.

Edwina and Richard packed their car while I packed my bike. We said our goodbyes and soon all went our separate ways. They were going south to see family for a few days. Okarito was a nice diversion indeed.

The ride today was nice, snow-capped mountains off in the distance. Stopped in Whataora and got a veggie burger. The place had a lot of "no cycles" in front of it...reminded me of Adelaide River in the Territory in Australia. Read the local free paper. Seems some teens "let loose" and really rocked up a storm with their band at the local Workingmens Club the other night.

Rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I didn't even stop for a break anywhere. Got to the backpackers which is an old church that has been nicely remodeled into a backpackers. The guy running it, Paul, asked me if I could help him tow a vechicle up the road. Next thing I knew we were up on a logging road with me steering this very used Landcruiser. I mean, the thing was a work of art, the clutch had a cable on it so you could pull it back up...and there was moss growing in it. I loved it. Paul ended up steering it and I drove the truck. Turning the whole works around was a bit of a pain, the Landcruiser nearly rolling over the edge at one point. We got it towed down to his place and went back to the backpackers. I talked to Paul for awhile, he turns 30 years old, 23 days after I do.

Tomorrow I'm going to head to Greymouth.

June 12th, 2003

90km

55.9mi