Undara National Park QLD
A couple we camped beside at Carnarvon recommended visiting Undara National Park, a welcome recommendation as it turns out. If any one reading is planning a trip to Undara our top travel tip is to bring everything in with you. Fuel is another 40c/l to any fuel in any direction. Food in the Undara 'supermarket' is about 50% more than the Oasis roadhouse on the way in. Even 'discounted' out of date Allans' lollies were still $2.50 a packet.
Even with the inflation, the National Park is a fascinating visit. If you remember the 1997 movie Volcano with Tommy Lee Jones where the larva flowed along in storm water drains, that is what happened in this area, minus the storm water drains. The lava flowed and a crust formed on the top allowing the larva to continue to flow under the crust. When the lava stopped flowing the crust remained as a long tunnel. One of these has been identified as 130km long originally, though some of the roof has collapsed leaving today, a series of shorter tunnels. The long series of tunnels can be identified in satellite photos or google earth. Check them out.
Climbing down into a lava tunnel.
Patterns on the roof of a tunnel.
The only way to view the tunnels is as part of a guided tour. There are some tunnels that have high CO2 levels that aren't very healthy and some openings on the surface that are hard to spot but easy to fall down! The first tunnel required a bit of a climb over rocks to get in then opened to a huge area, about the size of a house. These tunnels were rarely used by the local indigenous people with little or no evidence of their activities. Many other animals do enter the tunnels when sick or injured and die. There were skulls of a dingo, pig, kangaroo and even a cow.
As the water seeps through the tunnel roof minerals are washed out of the stone creating the colours on the roof. Algae near the entrances, where there is light, create other colours.
In some of the fully collapsed tunnels pockets of dry rainforest still exists. The Bottle Trees that were very old had left/right notches in the trunk where indigenous people climbed to harvest the fruit when the trees flowered. In QLD they have the Bottle Trees but WA has Boab Trees that are a different species altogether.
Another tunnel had an entrance and an exit and had an intersection of two lava flows. In this tunnel Chelsea spotted a spider in one very low section that Bianca had just come out of. No way Bianca was going back in there! On the roof was two small colonies of bats. The bats were tiny compared to the flying foxes back home. Earlier in the year the roof was almost covered with hundreds of bats.
After the tour we took a walk around the rim of a volcano, lots of lava all over the volcano all cold in the form of basalt rocks. The country side out here is very dry and rocky, and the river ways are all dry now though it is evident how wide they are during the wet season.
Dinner was delicious T-bone steak and sausages cooked on our campfire. Angela made some fruit bread that was cooked in the camp oven over the coals. The fruit bread was delicious for breakfast before we packed up and moved on to drive up the cape.
No comments:
Post a Comment