Day 30- Undara Lava Tubes

We booked into the 8am tour of the Lava Tubes so no messing around this morning. Just up, breakfast, dressed and out the door. Darcy is sick (fever and some vomiting) so I had a crappy night with him and he was still unwell this morning but I wore him in the ergo for the tour and he was happy to snuggle. Our tour guide was lovely and bloody funny (and had a few good tips about photography too! LOL!). The wetlands beside the road on the way to the Tubes is usually a dry swamp plain at this time of year but the wet season was a big one this year. There are two walking trails that are completely under water and that has only happened three times since Undarra opened.

The walking trail down into the Tubes is quite lovely with the definite change of plants again. Hot and dry up top and lovely and cool down below. We did not know beforehand but the Tubes themselves are full of water as well and while we went under the big archway and down into two entranceways we did not get to walk right into the Tubes which we had all been looking forward to doing. The water looks amazing under there though and we could have swum in along the pathways but again no one said anything so we had no swimmers. If I had of been wearing anything other than denim pants I would have gone in in my clothes. One lady went in in her clothes and another stripped down to her undies! LOL! But without torches they could not go far into the Tube.

After the tour we came back to our camp for morning tea. I made tea with some native lemongrass that we were shown at the end of the tour. It was surprisingly good and very flavorful. Went exceptionally well with some lime and black pepper chocolate from the Coffee Works.

We wanted to do the Kalkani Crater Rim walk but it’s 16km from camp and we did not like the idea of riding our bikes that far there and back! The guys want to keep the vehicles hitched to the vans to save time tomorrow so instead Mum and I did one of the local 2.5km walks around the park. We went up to a lookout that had a great view of the small volcano peaks around Undarra. Gorgeous scenery. And the flowers and birds and butterflies are just everywhere. We were going to do another small walking circuit on the way back but Mum’s shoe fell apart! So back to camp.
We pottered around back at camp for a few hours doing nothing special. I had a good look through the hundreds of photos I had taken. We were going to head out to the wetlands and have a walk along the main road and do some wildlife spotting but we weren’t in a rush! And ended up just tidying up the van and getting dinner prepped to make our departure easier in the morning. We decided that even though we have a big drive ahead of us to get from here to Charters Towers we want to do have a look at Kalkani Crater so we are going to do that on the way out in the morning.

Athough not technically a pub there is a bar here and it was decided that a CRAB review was better than no review at all…. But when we got there it was closed! LOL! The park was full of guests this morning but they all left after the tours today. But we hung around looking at the old railway cars that have been converted to a restaurant and bar area and eventually a bloke came and opened up to serve us a couple of beers.
Not sure if Tim got enough of a feel for the place for a proper review so I’ll just have to see what he comes up with. The kids were happy enough playing with the balls from the pool table anyway.

Darcy was getting grouchy again so showers and dinner and a super early night for him. Jordy ate with Mum and Dad, and dad cooked pancakes! They then fed him two bowls of ice-cream so he was up til all hours riding out his sugar high.