‘A tiny ant crawling on a map’: Lael Wilcox on her epic cycle from Perth to Brisbane

In a small town in the Shire of Banana, a 38-year-old Alaska woman jumps on her bicycle in the chill of the early morning and is about to set off for a day’s ride through the central Queensland countryside when a stranger approaches.

The man, in his 60s, has driven hours and slept in his van for this moment.

“He brought me a pineapple,” the cyclist chuckles later, recounting the meeting.

“He said, ‘You probably haven’t had much fresh fruit since you’ve been riding’.”

The town is Theodore, the day is last Sunday, and the bloke with the pineapple is an everyday Australian bicycle enthusiast who introduces himself as a friend of Kate and Neil from Perth.

The Alaskan, however, is no ordinary bike rider. Lael Wilcox has not only ridden across Australia to be here, but across Europe and the US, too. Wilcox is now past the halfway mark in a round-the-world odyssey in which she aims to ride 29,000km through 22 countries in about 110 days and, in so doing, set a new official Guinness world record.