Where's the Wardies?: The Undara Experience

Yesterday we left Port Douglas and took the road up into the (rather pleasant) Atherton Tablelands before swinging south west into the "Gulf Savannah". The change in the landscape was as dramatic as the change to the annual rainfall (Daintree gets 4m/yr, The Gulf Savannah gets about 100cm). I think we copped some of that Daintree rainfall as we left the tablelands actually ... it poured so heavy as we were coming down out of Ravenshoe (Queensland's highest town) I almost had to pull over for a while. it was gone before we knew it though and it was not long before we started entering the dry bushland and seeing huge ant hills everywhere. This photo below is nothing compared to the numbers we saw earlier along the road, but it gives you an idea I think. It was also rather strange as we approached Mt Garnet to realise that the single lane road with cattle grids we were on was actually our national highway #1. So different from the multi-lane free ways passing through Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane!

Towards mid afternoon we arrived at our destination Undara Experience and set up camp. We met some people in the pool and later caught up with them at the bistro for a fun night of chatting and laughter. This afternoon we took our tour to the lava tubes. This was an amazing tour. The Undara volcana erupted a number of times around 150,000 years ago, and around 39 individual lava tubes resulted, some up to 160km long. They collapsed in places, and wherever this has happened the Savannah suddenly gives way to pockets of rainforest. Our tour took us into one of these pockets and we entered the tube feature known as "The Arch", as well as a few other sections of tube. These photo's simply dont do it justice. You'd really need quite a few hours (and a tripod) to capture it properly on camera. Our eyes certainly had no trouble soaking it all in - it's truly worth visiting.