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.

•••

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

•••

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

•••

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

•••

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 12th, 2003

day-526_wellington-new-zealand

New Zealand: Wellington

0 km today

22185.52 km total

0.0 mi today

13759.4 mi total

USA | Australia | New Zealand | USA

ok, now the last saturday in the southern Hemisphere. To start it off with, I didn't wake up till 2:30pm. Ended up watching TV and playing computer games, wierd...cause I don't normally do this. I went over to Mairead's for dinner. She was making yummy food for everyone. We talked awhile and then I had to go since I was going to meet up with MCQ and Becki at Indigo. I went to Indigo and didn't see anyone. (although his Becki was indeed there, dunno how I missed her). Then I found out that it wasn't a band playing 70/'s 80's punk/ new wave, it was a DJ. I wasn't too keen on paying 10 bucks to hear someone play records I own already. Got back to the apartment and MCQ was still there. We both lounged around and I fell asleep. Maireed called around midnight to say they were going out. I was a bit reluctant at first since I was tired from sleeping and MCQ was tired too...then he said "damn, it is our last Sat. night we gotta go out." So as MCQ and I were walking downtown I griped about getting old and actually considering staying in.

I got two clock photos on the way to meeting up with Mairead. MCQ and I passed this bunch of girls who were talking about beating up some girl or something. I did what Grubby or Myke always did when confronted with a messed up situation, giggle and say "awesome".

We went out to a few bars. Got kebabs. As we were leaving one dance club a girl looked at MCQ and I and started walking towards us. She walked straight towards MCQ and looked at him. He just snapped "what!?!?". She jumped back a little and just said "nothing" and walked off, it was a bit funny. I don't know if she was wanting to flirt with him or just walk around him. The bar kinda sucked though, playing too much undancable music, Laura Branigan's "Gloria", Beatles "oh bla di..", and "eye of the tiger". We were tailights.

Hung out with the Buskers on Cuba street, got more kebabs, went home.

July 12th, 2003

0km

0.0mi