According to EF Education EasyPost, Lachlan Morton has circumnavigated Australia, circling his home country in an astonishingly fast 30 days, 9 hours and 59 minutes.

While it is still too early to officially declare a new cycling record, the 14,200+ km effort, which finished at the Port Macquarie lighthouse at 1:54 pm on Saturday, shaved nearly a week off the fastest time previously known.

Morton was attempting to beat Dave Alley's time of 37 days, 20 hours, and 45 minutes, which the Australian Road Records Association set in the 1990s for the 14,200-km minimum and which Dave Alley ran 14,251 km in 2011. In addition, Reid Anderton's record of 14,178 km, 37 days and 1 hour 18 minutes is also in the Guinness World Records. Morton's speedy effort may simplify matters. “Mentally, it takes a lot of time to focus,” Morton said in a release from the EF Education Easypost.

“And then you wake up every morning feeling like your body is being destroyed.

“Just keep showing up and doing it every day. It was pretty tough. I had to rely on my crew, I had to rally to get home. You spend an enormous amount of time every day pushing yourself. I think that's the real challenge of circumnavigating Australia.

“I've never been as relieved to finish a race as I am today.

While beating his best time was no mean feat, the EF Education-EasyPost rider knew from the start that this goal was within reach.

He took time to rest, a strategy he had tried on the Tour Divide route, where the tracker recorded stop times about a third of the way through the trip. Morton often restarted early in the morning, and riding through the night was an effective strategy, especially in the intense northern heat.

Morton had a lot of company in his final stint on the road, aside from the support crew who followed in their camper. The riders gathered in large numbers as they passed through Sydney on Friday and approached the final finish line. After a stop in Newcastle, Morton set out on the “scenic route” in the darkness just before midnight.

“You're trying to find all the hills between Sydney and Port, but you'll be fine,” he said. We have one full day ahead of us and absolutely no gift for this final day.”

But the winner of the 2024 Unbound, however, returned to Port Macquarie, New South Wales, where she left on September 5. Despite the heat, headwinds, and rain, he averaged over 450 km each day.

According to the Australian Road Records Association, this is a dramatic time reduction to a record that riders have chased time and time again since 1899, when Arthur Richardson returned to Perth 245 days after his departure and began setting records. 1985 saw the first time he cut 100 days, and in 2011 Allie shaved three days off the record in 2011.

As part of his record attempt, Morton donated over $124,000 to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation of Australia.

You can look back on Morton's journey on the Live Tracking page and donate to Morton's Indigenous Literacy Fund fundraising page.