Sunday - 19th August

Spent the day at Undara Lava Tube.  These were formed around 190 thousand years ago when lava from a vast eruption flowed along watercourses, cooled on the outside but still continued to flow quite quickly internally.  The liquid lava emptied out leaving a vast length of tunnel (over 100km?).  Our laconic guide, Colin, picked us up at the caravan park, then guided us up the side and around the cold and windy crater rim of the volcano.  After that he took us to the first of three sections of lava tube.  We walked through scrub past some bottle trees, still with foot and holds hacked by aborigines many years ago, down through the collapsed roof into the tube.  It was immense, with flat sandy floors and mottled arched ceilings.  After touring three of the tube sections we went back to the tour centre for lunch, on the way we had an encounter with a large Eastern Brown snake that decided to curl up in buses chassis.  Colin encouraged it out and we went on our way.  In the afternoon we toured some larger sections of the tubes, one of them almost  900 metres long and populated by various species of incontinent bat.  It is an astonishing place and the tube is in an amazingly good condition considering it is 190,000 years old.