Undara Lava Tubes

Undara is a private resort almost due north of Charters Towers. The road northwards, while sealed all the way, is at times only a single lane wide, so when another vehicle comes the other way you both have to get off the bitumen onto the dirt verge to pass. This is difficult enough when the the vehicle coming the other way is a 50 metre long road train, it becomes even more scary when the same sort of road train is going the same way and overtakes us. We were quite glad to reach the resort unscathed.

The Undara volcano erupted about 190,000 years ago, spewing rivers of lava across the land. The top of the lava cooled to form a seal, the hot interior continued to flow leaving hollow tubes behind. The lava tubes are now protected inside a national park, and are only accessible by doing a guided tour. We had booked a full day tour at the same time as we booked our caravan park site, we also gave ourselves an extra day to explore the other sights in the area.

The resort is very well set up with numerous well marked walking trails, we did several on both the afternoon we arrived and on our 'free' day. The scrubby landscape was pretty indistinguishable from many other places we have visited in Australia, but the walks and associated lookouts were interesting enough.

Caravan parks are generally on the outskirts of towns so it was a treat to be able to walk to the on-site restaurant for dinner. We both indulged in very 'Australian' meals, with John having crocodile fillets while Wendy had the tasting plate of crocodile, emu and kangaroo. The meals were excellent, and very reasonably priced given the isolation of the resort.

Of course, the reason for going to Undara is to experience the lava tubes. Our full day tour visited 7 different tubes, plus provided a walk around one of the many volcano craters in the national parks. The tubes are incredible, you can really picture the hot molten rock pouring down inside, at speeds up to 20 kmh. Iron and calcium have created colourful patterns on the walls, and bats huddle overhead. While the tubes superficially resemble limestone caves, the smooth walls and even shapes are quite different to a typical cave formation. There are no stalactites or stalagmites, although some dripping molten rock has formed 'lavacles' that superficially resemble the more familiar limestone formations. The full day tour visited all the tubes that are open to the public, although some of them involved quite heavy duty scrambling over fallen rocks to access. We also had to wade through freezing knee high water in one of the tubes, apparently this is the first time in at least 70 years that water is still present this late in the season, the flooding and heavy wet season just past is unprecedented in living memory. The photo of John at right shows only ankle high water, but already you might be able to see his toes curling up in the cold!

All in all we had a fantastic time at Undara, it is an experience unlike any other available in Australia, and virtually anywhere in the world.