Undara Volcanic National Park, Qld

Mt Surprise

The road leading east out of Georgetown has a large flashing sign informing us that there are roadworks for the next 65km. This is of some concern as the large body of workers that form the road gangs have all left town. They got the word that the money for the project had run out so they just up and left, leaving the state of the developmental road a mystery. The next town is Mt Surprise and is only 95km away and all along the first 65km are abandoned graders and rollers and trucks and diggers: left where they finished work at the time. The road itself was in all states of repair from the original very narrow developmental strip of tar and dirt, wrecked, under repair, newly graded, half finished and some parts which were wide smooth boulevard. It was 80kph, or slower, most of the way as quite a lot of oncoming traffic forced us onto the dirt.

By the time we reached Mt Surprise we were ready for a break. There was a market in the park selling everything from overpriced old toys to overpriced mouldy jam. We went over the road to have a coffee, which was undrinkable and Judy paid a dollar to go and see the miniature horses and exotic birds. The horses may or may not have been the filthy moth eaten creatures way out the back in the scrub and the birds were equally as scruffy looking.

Judy at Mt Surprise markes. The surprise was the price tags and the mould on top of the jam!

Undara Volcanic National Park
We moved on to our new camp: Undara Lodge. This is very reminiscent of Cradle Mountain Lodge, except its hot and dry! The sites are in the bush and ours is large and a drive through one. The Lodge area itself is built out of old railway carriages and they have done a really good job of it. Oddly, they don't make any fuss at all about the railway theme, it's just there.

The first things you notice are the birds. Currawongs and Apostle birds are all over you the second you pull in. Pecking at your feet and eyeballing you from their perch on the awning while you try and have some lunch. Judy is not impressed. Obviously a thousand tourists a day feed the filthy things and they have become quite aggressive.

Judy went for a swim and I took the ‘Pioneer’ path for my self-guided walk of about 3km. They claim that the telegraph that was built in a race to beat the South Australians in getting to Darwin and thus securing the overseas telegraph traffic came right through this property. The walk starts out in front of a ironbark tree with a ‘Y’ shaped trunk starting about waist high. They reckon that the linesman just lopped of any tree at waist height that was in the way, and that over the years the trees have re-sprouted with multiple branches erupting from the stump, and kept growing. That’s their story, so we are invited to keep a lookout for these trees as they ‘clearly’ show the path of the telegraph. The book about the ‘Singing wires’ they sell themselves states that the 1 chain (20m about) wide path was kept clear at all times… I am sceptical at the best of times, but when I came across the first galvanised pipe metal telegraph pole I became downright suspicious. Then there was an older rusty metal one and finally a Cypress Pine with a bit of old fencing wire wrapped around the top. The suggestion was that this was an original pole that has somehow lasted 153 years in the bush. The claimed that it had an insulator, but it wasn’t in place. As the walk went further to a replica pioneer hut, I went on and in so doing passed another Cypress Pine pole leaning at a crazy angle and conveniently held up by the fork of a gum tree. This one, they claimed, was a corner post as shown by the type of insulator used, but sadly also missing. My less than charitable thoughts regarding the authenticity of the yarn were reinforced when I came across another steel pole with multiple cross-arms, something that they definitely didn’t have in 1870, certainly not until the telephone wires were added.

The hut was a replica of the original hut built at Spring Creek, 40miles south, in 1860 by the founder of this property, William Collins. The Collins family have been involved here continuously for 6 generations, and may be owners of this park.

Judy going for a nap. Undara Lodge, Qld