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The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. This week’s issue is written by Natasha Frost, a reporter in Melbourne. Earlier this year, my colleague Hikari Hida and I reported on an amazing, improbable journey underway on Australia’s east coast. Ryokei Mifune, a young Japanese backpacker who goes by Uni, was making his way from Melbourne to Cairns, via Sydney, on a flimsy nonmotorized child’s scooter, a journey of more than 2,000 miles. He was, in every respect, underprepared — camping in urban parks, losing toenails to the tarmac (he wore sandals throughout) and communicating with strangers via Google Translate and the universal language of grateful smiles and nods. His ride, which was sorely inadequate for Australia’s gravel roads, broke on multiple occasions. “I don’t think I prepared anything in particular for this trip,” he told us in February. “If I think too much, it’ll just complicate things and it’ll be … [Read more...] about Big, Incredible Journeys in an Incredibly Big Country