Day 45 Mt Surprise to Atherton

I awoke to crashing around in the caravan next door at 4am, thinking "Bloody grey nomads are packing up and moving on again" and Peter swore he wasn't like that.  I had to get up and take care of urgent matters, and then struggled to get back to sleep.  Camping does have some downsides.  Lisa reckons I got back to sleep, but I didn't feel rested.

We're starting to get pretty good at this pack up and set up thingy, and as we smashed through the morning routine, we were ready to go in no time at all really.  The road works continued this morning and it was a 45 minute drive to do the 40 km drive to the Undara Lava Tubes which was the first stop on our itinerary today.

The lava tubes were formed some 180,000 years ago when a volcano erupted...not your run of the mill Krakatoa or Vesuvius exploding magma vent, but what they call a shield volcano that is a bit like a festering sore.  They just ooze magma and lava and this runs away via path of least resistance.  The Undara tubes (Undara means "Long Way" in native tongue) were formed by lava flow that cooled on the surface and a crust formed over flowing lava.  The Undara tubes are traceable for over 110km, and are the worlds oldest and best preserved lava tubes.  Apparently though, they are very similar to the lava flows in Hawaii, so the science geeks can get a pretty good grip on what's happened and what is happening still today.


What remains is a series of concealed caves that pretty much nobody knows anything about until there is a huge earthquake (6-7 on the Richter Scale) which will collapse the roof in sections, and the lava tube is revealed...Fascinating stuff.  The water in this tube is the water table, and is not a result of water flowing into the tube from rainfall, but from the rising of water from below the ground.  Interesting though is that wherever the roof has caved in, there is lush tropical rainforest growth, in an otherwise desolate savannah grassland. 

The volcano was basalt rock with large amounts of calcium and other trace minerals that you can see in the colours of the staining on the ceiling and walls.  Our guide explained that the rough walls were indicative of the lava flow, and where the ceiling was smooth, was an indication of a rock fall that has exposed the natural granite.  It is near impossible to tell the exact size and rate of flow as the tube size does not indicate the original size, and there is 180,000 years of dust on the floor.


Plenty of wildlife was to be found including a species of wallaby, and this funky little micro bat who was hanging just above our heads.

These bats were to be found throughout the lava tube, and the kids were pretty excited to see them flying about in the darkness and the torchlight from our guide. 

 On the way out of Undara lava tubes, we saw a couple of the signs below, and had to take a photo.  Now there are no words except beware, but I'd be interested to know if there is anyone out there that doesn't understand the gist of this pictogram...

We drove through some amazing countryside that was reminiscent of Bridgetown, or Lisa was thinking like the Adelaide hills.  There was rolling green pastures with dairy and beef cattle, and steep hills. 

The picture right at the top of the blog is of Millstream Wind Farm which was the first wind farm commissioned in Queensland, and has 20 wind turbines.  They are built on the site of a volcanic crater that fed a lava flow down to Millstream Falls.  All of the rock around the falls is volcanic basalt and can be traced back to the wind farm.  Pretty cool.  This area was used as a military garrison during WWII.


We drove across to our last stop for the day before Atherton, being the Hypipamee Crater and Dinner Falls.  The drive in was excruciating as we were stuck behind hippy tourists in a rental car that were insisting on driving at 40kmh through winding mountainside.  That meant about 4000 gear changes for me in a short distance of road.  They pulled over and let us pass with 500m to the turnoff, and then followed us into the park anyway. 

The crater is a lava vent tube, and the water at the bottom is said to be over 60m deep.  The kids were starting to get a bit antsy by this time, and any hope of a serene contemplation of nature and the wonder and splendour of volcanic forces was shattered by screams, incessant dribble and tattle tales of injustices.  All I wanted to do was have a nice walk with the missus, but the young ones were hell bent on making things difficult.  It was at this point on the way down the hillside to Dinner Falls that Rowan tripped on a log and faceplanted into the dirt scuffing up his hands, knees and a hip.  I continued my walk at the back alone.

Dinner falls was pretty, but not too spectacular.

Probably not worth the long walk down and out, but at least we can say we did it.  When we tried to return to the car however, we were cut off by a large, angry and quite frightening Cassowary.  Being that they are endangered, I wasn't allowed to chase it away with a stick, so it sat in our path stalking us and blocking our escape from the park.  I would describe this charming creature as standing roughly 1.5m tall, and  being more than half my weight (Be nice everyone,) so it was a formidable bird to be challenged by.  It even hissed at me in a nasty way.

We called the cassowary hotline, and got passed through 3 different departments before being hung up on.  Now, not much frightens me with the distinct exception of swans, ostriches, and now bloody cassowary.  These things are as close to a dinosaur as a crocodile with big sharp pointy talons to hack at you with.  Gimme a stick any day.  20 minutes later the bird relented and we passed without incident...although it did emerge from the bush behind us to make sure we had left...