Undara Lava Tubes

As we drove into Charters Towers, we saw one of those big brown tourist attraction signs that read "Undara Lava Tubes 410km". When checking in at the Dalrymple Tourist Van Park I inquired of the manager, was given a glossy brochure plus a glowing "must do", and as they say, the rest is history!

Passing the road Train

We hit the road, and headed for Undara, having decided to break the journey halfway, with an overnight at Greenvale. The Gregory Developmental Road is part of the Great Inland Way. These "Developmental Roads" are primarily Road Train routes, and comprise a single lane of bitumen, with graded gravel on each side. When you meet another car, you each put two wheels in the gravel and slowly pass in a cloud of dust. When you meet a Road Train, you stop, get right off the bitumen and let the Road Train pass, whether it is approaching from in front or behind! The two way radio comes into its own, locked on Truckie Channel 40, the Road Train Drivers are calling constantly, and as long as we tell them what we are doing, there are no problems, just a "thanks in the caravan", and we are all on our way again.

The country is very dry and dusty, with mostly cattle. We drive past the Eathan Picnic Race Track which was ready to hold its annual race meeting over the next 2 days. There was already a crowd gathered. We were told that it was the last of the unique true grass ( I think?) meetings in Queensland, where the horses are all quarantined together for weeks before the event, and are only handed back to their respective trainers for the week prior to the meeting, in the hope that they get a fair and square race! Stopped for an ice cream at the Bluewater Springs Roadhouse, which welcomed us with the sign "Toilets for use by customers only. No pay no P." The person behind the counter was a real conversationalist. I asked 4 questions and got 4 one word answers!

Beer garden at the Three Rivers Hotel

We arrived at Greenvale, population 16. It is the only town we've met everyone in town! The caravan park was fine, the owner a real character, and as you can imagine it wasn't hard to find a site. The town was built by a mining company in 1972 when a nickel mine was established. They built accommodation blocks, a pub, an olympic swimming pool, and a few other shops and admin buildings. The railway was extended 200km from Charters Towers, and in 1994, it all closed down when the mine was no longer viable. The pub, The Three Rivers Hotel, was made famous in a song recorded by Slim Dusty. It is the only pub where we've ever been served by a mum with a baby in her arms and a corgi named Lucy! She was a wealth of information,(the mum not the corgi) and these days the town keeps going as a result of the road crews working on the upgrading of the road, but she was confident that the mine would re-open, as new mining technologies were resulting in many of the old mines being opened up again.

Next morning we hit the trail to Undara. More Road Trains and very little other traffic. We went through The Lynd, which was really only The Oasis Roadhouse, and looked really rough & ready, and eventually drove into Undara around lunchtime. The Undara Experience was where we were staying. It is a private enterprise, on a family property that was once a cattle station. They decided to make the lava tubes a tourist attraction, and have very successfully done so. They have made it a fantastic outback experience, with a central restaurant/bar and reception/shop, as well as several old railway carriages that have been converted into "luxury" accommodation. There is a tent village for hire, a camping ground and a caravan park, which is our home for 3 nights. They have a host of walking tracks, and tours of the lava tubes can only be done with one of their local Savannah Guides.

Lava Tube at Undara

I won't try and get too involved in all that happens at Undara. If you go to www.undara.com.au you can see all that there is to offer. The region is now the Undara Volcanic National Park,
and I think I remember that there are the remains of about 150 volcanoes in the park. Some are the cone shaped mountains we know as volcanoes, but others are just small mounds and rises. The lava flows here are the longest continuous lava flows on earth, where from the original eruption of one volcano, lava flowed 160km in one direction and 90km in the other direction. It all happened about 190,000 years ago.Lava filled every crack, crevice, river bed etc. in the area. As the flows crept across the land the outside cooled forming a crust, the lava continued to flow inside, and as it moved on and cooled more, it created a series of tubes which we see today. You can walk down into many of the tubes on stairs and boardwalks, which is fascinating. Unlike limestone caves, there is no calcite so no fancy things to look at, just the evidence of the lava flowing through the tube.

Our nightly visitor, the Bettong

Back at camp, there is an abundance of wildlife that comes right into your camp. Kangaroos and wallabies are everywhere, and I've never seen so many kookaburras and currawongs. The sound of the kookaburras early morning and at sunset was deafening. Every evening we got a visit from a little member of the kangaroo family called a bettong. The first night he came out from under our legs and between our chairs and scared the crap out of us! Having established he wasn't carnivorous, we tried to pat him and he just came straight up to us. You can see in the picture how small he is, if you compare him to Carol's thong(flip flop for the foreigners, not underwear!).

What don't these guys do?

On our second day, we took ourselves out to one of the bigger craters in the National Park, the Kalkani Crater. We walked up the side of the crater and then right around the rim. The view out over the countryside was breathtaking. From here we took a short drive into the nearest town, Mt. Surprise. The area is apparently famous among the gem fossicking brigade. A visit to the General Store come Caravan Park come cafe come gem tour operator come gem showroom come Fossicking Supplier come Tyre Shop and Snake Show, was all we needed to understand Mt. Surprise! They had some amazing cut stones in their display, many of them worth 1000's of dollars. From here we headed for the pub for a cold beer. The dogs out numbered the patrons about 2 to one! But the beer was cold, and the barmaid, who rolled her own cigarettes, was a gem herself. Carol likes a very weak shandy, so I usually order lemonade with a dash of beer, which prompted the response "how the bloody hell am I supposed to price that!" to which I replied "anyway that's easy for you luv" which got "well I suppose it is just a soft drink". I love the bush!!! We finished our drink, savoured the atmosphere, and headed back to camp for a little rest as we wanted to be fresh for our sunset tour.

Undara sunset.

At around 5.30pm we headed out with our local Kiwi Savannah Guide. We had him on the day tour as well, and he was a lot of fun, with a dry sense of humour, and that cynical nature that is so Kiwi. You know the one. It is only true if I've actually seen it, or it was done by a Kiwi! I loved some of the lines. "the lava flowed for somewhere between 1 and 100 years. The scientists just don't know exactly. It could have been 150!" Or the classic starter "I've been told, but haven't seen myself...." Anyway it was all good fun. We drove out to a small rock covered outcrop, climbed up to the top on a well worn track, and sat down to watch the sunset, complete with champagne, cheese and bickies and tropical fruit. What a setting, and the sunset didn't let us down, helped by the smoke haze.

Bats in the lava tube

From here we went to one of the lava tubes, now in pitch darkness, to witness an amazing site. The lava tubes are full of micro bats. These are true bats with sonar, and breed in the lava tubes in their thousands. As night falls they leave the tubes to feed on insects. The entrances to the tubes are usually partly concealed by trees, and the local tree pythons get into the trees to catch the bats in flight for a feed. The main season for this is October to January, but as the snakes generally are around, it was hoped we might see the phenomenon. We didn't, which for us wasn't a problem! The whole thing is staged in the dark. Too much light and the bats will go deep into the tube. You can't see the end of your nose, and we are all told not to use our flash on the cameras until told to! We all line up, get told to point our cameras at the roof, and on the count of 3 flash. We did this 3 times and amazingly got pictures of bats but no snakes. Look closely at the picture, and enlarge it if you can, the bats are there! It was truly an amazing experience. On the way back our guide gave us a bit of outback folklore. The snakes are out early and the black orchids have flowered early, which means it will be an early and big wet season. We could hear the doubt in that Kiwi voice. Time will tell.

We had a fantastic time at Undara. It just served to remind us how many amazing things there are in this great land to see, and just how many we don't know about. We have only scratched the surface.