Spring Break 2009 - Day 4 - Undara

When we left Cairns we headed to Undara National park. Undara is located in the Australian Outback, southwest of Cairns.

Undara has some of the oldest and longest lava tubes in the world. Basically, just outside of Undara there is an old, dormant volcano. This volcano “erupted” about 190,000 years ago. Its eruption was more of a trickle, like the volcanoes in Hawaii. The lava, seeking lower ground, feel into a ravine. While in the ravine, the top layer of the lava cooled, and formed basalt rock, while the lower layers were still molten hot and flowed throw. The volcano continued this trickle for some unknown period of time. When it stopped, the molten lava continued to flow out, leaving just the upper, cooled basalt rock as a ceiling to the ravine, which makes lava tubes. Over the course of time, some of the ceiling has collapsed due to earthquakes, allowing people to walk into the tubes. Plants have also grown in some of these openings, creating areas of rainforest in the middle of the outback. Overall, the tubes were really cool.

Another cool thing about Undara is that there is a lot of wildlife about. On our way to the lava tubes, we saw a variety of kangaroos, wallaroos and wallabies (I have no idea the difference but I think it has to do with size, color, and face shape). I also saw some of the infamous rock-a-roos and tree-a-bies: rocks and trees that look like kangaroos and wallabies and make you take out your camera screaming and shouting only to realize that you’ve been douped.

That night, we went to a bat-cave on site. We went at sunset so we got to be in the cave as all the bats were leaving. We were allowed to take pictures (mine came out with just a cave…) so after a while I just looked around as everyone else took pictures and saw strobe-motion bat-flying which was quite awesome to watch.

We got back to the main site, had some dinner, sat around a campfire and just stargazed until we hit the hay in order to wake up at 6 AM the following morning!



Undara landscape


A lavatube

Days 5-7: Click!