Out on the open road, with a fly net over his face and towing a heavy-duty silver suitcase behind him, 70-year-old Kuno Penner admits he must be an unusual sight to behold.
The German retiree was recently spotted powering down a dusty highway in far western New South Wales, surrounded by a seemingly never-ending expanse of desert.
"If I would see a man with a white beard (walking), I would ask him if he is crazy," he laughed.
Mr Penner has spent the last three years traversing the globe on foot.
He said he has walked 27,000 kilometres through 25 countries, averaging more than 30 kilometres a day.
"I was a sportsman all my life," Mr Penner said.
"That's why I am strong enough. I can do it."
The former runner said he embarked on the enormous journey because he wanted to "see the world" before he died.
"This travel is so nice, so beautiful. For me it's like living in paradise."
Power-walking through the pandemic
Mr Penner arrived in Australia in February after trekking throughout Asia and the Middle East.
The global pandemic has kept him in the country since, and he spent three months in Brisbane waiting for border restrictions to be lifted.
He said very few Australians had stopped him to ask what he was doing, compared with hundreds of curious onlookers quizzing him about his journey each day in Asia.
"In Australia, along the east coast, one person in one month asked me what I was doing," he said.
And across the sparsely populated outback New South Wales, he said he hardly saw anyone at all.
"In Sumatra (Indonesia) they have a thousand people (per) one kilometre square and here, three," Mr Penner said.
Mr Penner documents his travels almost daily on his personal online blog.
He said his family and friends at home in Germany initially thought he was "crazy" for abandoning traditional retirement plans in favour of a high-energy global escapade.
"But now they are proud of me," he said.
From Broken Hill he planned to walk through South Australia and on to Melbourne in Victoria.
