Undara 2

Day two

Undara’s claim to fame has to be the lava tubes. What’s a lava tube? When lava pours out of a volcano and runs out across the countryside in one solid stream, gouging a deep bed, it cools a bit at the outside edges. These cooled bits set and basically build a wall up either side of the stream and eventually a roof as well. Now this I found hard to believe, but the lava pouring out of Undara volcano, a shield volcano, ran in one stream for some 130km across the land to the west. Even harder to believe is that when the volcano stopped spewing, the lava kept going along its way, leaving an empty tube behind.  In lots of places these roofs have collapsed leaving gaps where you can climb down into the tubes and go and explore. Which is what we did on the two-hour ‘Archway’ tour. These tubes are pretty big, maybe 40m across and 20m high. There are tree roots coming down from the ceiling and bats hanging about all over the place. To the unknowing eye, they just look like caves. But once you’ve had the formations such as the wall slips pointed out, the story of their formation becomes a bit easier to believe. You can see this 130km tunnel from space, as shown in the satellite of the area. This is made possible because of the different type of vegetation that grows in the collapsed sections. It’s what is known as remnant rainforest, and that on the savannah surrounding the tubes is sparse woodland.

Lava tube, Undara, Qld

Speaking of the surrounding area, there are heaps of volcanos to be seen, in any direction one looks. You just have to know what to look for. One of them is the Kalkani volcano, well, its crater anyhow. You drive out to it, walk up the 600m path to the rim and then walk around the rim, about 1500m. The sign claims it’s only a 50m climb, but it looks and feels a lot more ‘n that. It’s interesting to look into the crater but the view over the countryside is pretty spectacular, especially after you’ve read all the signs pointing out all the bumps that were one-time volcanos. For your interest, Undara was a shield volcano, where lava just oozes out under a crust, Kilkani is a scoria volcano, where lave is just spewed straight up into the air, sometimes for kilometres, and then there are the explosive volcanos, like Etna and Vesuvius, which none of ‘ours’ are.

Crater of Kalkani volcano. Undara, Qld