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

July 1st, 2003

day-515_wellington-new-zealand

New Zealand: Wellington

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22185.52 km total

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13759.4 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

Woke up a bit early this morning. A girl decided to pack her backpack at 7am, inside the room. Rather than dragging it all outside and doing it in the hall, she did it in the room...oh well.

I got packed up and put my stuff in the TV room, since I'm going to shack up with MCQ and his sister Becki down the street.

Mostly just hung around the hostel today, watched A Civil Action and The Deer Hunter, seen both...but it was good to see The Deer Hunter again for the footage of the mountains. (I think it was filmed in Washington, although it took place is Pennsylvania).

Said goodbye to people, met some new people, took clock photos of other people.

Met up with MCQ, good to see him again after parting ways a month ago. We went out to dinner down the street. The restaurant staff brought out all the leftover muffins and sandwiches and told us to take some with us...cool, there is lunch tomorrow.

On the way back we passed this guy sitting on a bus bench with this freaky mask on. We said hi and he said "how's it going" in this freaky voice. He yelled something else at us as we walked away. I really wanted to get a clock photo of him but didn't even have my markers with me. Oh well. I think he was doing some performace stuff or something, because I think I saw him leave with the girl on the next bus bench.

Tomorrow I turn 30, although, technially I don't turn 30 until 5am on the 3rd...Wellington time.

July 1st, 2003

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