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July 23, 2001
HUMAN POWERED CIRCUMNAVIGATION LEAVES ACROSS AUSTRALIA
* * * MEDIA RELEASE - 23/7/01 * * *
Round the World Adventurer, Jason Lewis and team of 6 cyclists have left from the shores of the Coral Sea to cycle to Darwin, Australia. With their back wheels in the ocean and a can of beer in hand they pedaled away from the beach near Starcke River, 120kms north of Cooktown for 86 days of off road cycling across Australia. Their route takes them through the wilds of the Australian bush to Uluru in the center then north to Darwin.
Every day the team will be joined by thousands of students and teachers via the Internet as their latest reports and learning resources are beamed back via satellite. The World Wildlife Fund are facilitating a daily link with 10,000 classrooms so that children can travel virtually with the team, utilizing custom-made learning activities for classroom use.
“After 7 years and 36,000 km of pedaling I felt the need to invest in something very real and tangible – like how the next generation will take care of the planet. So when the opportunity arose to include students and teachers on this next leg through Australia and even better have them linked to their classmates via our sat-phones and the Internet, I jumped at the chance to become involved. I would have loved to have been able to learn all the subject disciplines when I was a kid without having to be confined to 4-walls of a classroom. These days, with technology moving as fast it is, learning can be made to be fun and relevant to very real and important issues we all face as global citizens”. Jason Lewis.
Lewis and his team will have to deal with crossing crocodile infested rivers in North Queensland, riding through 40+ degree temperatures in the Simpson Desert and avoid being waylaid by any one of the Outback’s notorious poisonous snakes and spiders. The route leads initially through the rainforest and cattle country of north Queensland to Mt. Isa and across the Simpson Desert from Jervois to Arltunga Historic Reserve and onto Alice Springs. From Uluru the intended route will see the team heading north to the Tanami Track via Papunya and Kings Canyon then up to Victoria River Downs where the route turns northeast towards Katherine and eventually to Darwin.
“Many local people here in Australia think we’re insane to try biking through the Red Center without using any roads. Its just miles and miles of very inhospitable country, and people die out there very quickly without sufficient water. But having just spent 178 days pedaling across a similar desert – the Pacific Ocean - I believe we have a pretty good chance of making it OK. Although different in many ways the principles of traveling through any desert environment are much the same.” Jason Lewis.
Since departing the Greenwich Meridian Line in 1994, British born Lewis (33yrs) has traveled 36,000kms, over half way around the planet, without assistance from either motors or the wind; pedalling a one-of-a-kind pedal boat across the world's oceans, bicycling and rollerblading over land. On August 18th 2000, Lewis became the first in history to pedal across the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco in the US to Port Douglas, Australia - 178 days and 13,000 kms. In 1994, original pedal partner Steve Smith (now retired from the expedition) and Lewis completed the first East-West crossing of the Atlantic by pedal power, and a year later Lewis completed the first unsupported crossing of the USA by roller blades.
As well as having both legs broken after being run over by an 82-year old with cataracts in Colorado, USA, a whale capsized his pedal-boat mid-Atlantic in 1994, an alligator attacked him in a lake in Florida and confrontation with armed militia in the Solomon Islands nearly ended in trajedy last year. Luck withstanding, Lewis expects the remainder of the expedition to take a further 4-5 years to complete.
On reaching Darwin Lewis plans on pedalling the pedal boat to East Timor, then kayaking the Indonesian chain of islands to Malaysia. Next the expedition will bicycle through Thailand, Laos into China then hike south over the Himalayas into India. From this point, a 2,200-mile crossing of the Indian Ocean to East Africa is planned. The adventure will continue through North Africa and Europe to finish at the Greenwich Meridian Line sometime in 2005, it's original starting point. It will have taken a total of 11 years to complete the entire circumnavigation.
A film crew shooting for a documentary series commissioned by The Discovery Channel will capture the team’s adventures at first hand.
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Posted by jason at July 23, 2001 3:00 AM