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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 16th, 2003
day-530_los-angeles-california-usa
CalifoniaLos Angeles
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22185.52 km total
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13759.4 mi total

another busy fun filled day in LA. (that rhymed!) Sara and Riley drove me to the YMCA for Riley's swimming lesson and play group. We get to the YMCA and the training pool is closed. Sara was bummmed and Riley acted indifferent to the matter. While they were at play group I walked to the Wednesday street markt in Santa Monica. It is about three bloocks that are closed off and vendors set up stalls with produce and crafts. I had to get back to meet up with Sara. I'm jumping ahead here but about three hours later a guy in a car went plowing though the market killing around 10 people and injuring another 50. The market wasn't even that big, it was just about three blocks closed off. It creeped me about a good deal.

Sara and Riley drove me to the market where they have a good deli. The really cool thing is I went to the coffee area, handed the girl my mug and asked her for coffee. She said words that made my heart flutter, "room for cream". Tearfully I replied "yes, please". You see, drip/french pressed coffee is really hard to come by in Australia/New Zealand. I paid my dollar and was off.

We drove to Greg and Phoebe's in around noon. We found the house. Sara was a bit excited cause she had never seen Echo Park before and finally got to see it We found Greg and Phoebe's house. I hadn't seen Phoebe for over two years, since then she'd gotten married to Greg. I missed the wedding though since I was slogging it though Tasmania at the time. I said goodbye to Sara and Riley.

Phoebe and Greg and I all talked for awhile. Later that evening they took me out for proper mexican food and cheap maragritas. We at and drank, talkin aobut everything. Greg has a record label called Bomp!, so Greg and I talked music for awhile. Later we went to the Bomp! warehouse and I got to have a look around. I got clock pics of Greg and Phoebe, then Phoebe got a clock title photo with me holding up an Iggy Pop/Stooges record that he released awhile back.

After drinks at another place we headed back to the house. I went to go to sleep around midnight, but Greg has a nice collection of rock and roll books, so I spent another three hours reading the book about Creation records. I was mostly interested in the whole part about My Bloody Valentine bankrupting the label. Tomorrow I go to Portland and get to see everybody!

July 16th, 2003
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