Blogs from Undara, Queensland, Australia, Oceania

went on a tour of the lava tubes this morning, fantastic, helped by the fact the tour guide was a decendent of the original family who set up here in 1860 as cattlemen.Apart from the story of the lava tubes he gave us a great insight into life around here since the first settlers.The current family run the Endura Experiance which is very eco friendly and whilst aimed at the tourist industary is very well controled. The tour took just over 3 1/2 hrs and involved driving in a bus to the first tubes,private access is not allowed.We were given a commentary all about the formation of this land and how the ancient volcano's played a major role in it's shaping.Much was spoken about the current management of the land and the need to keep a ... read more

Marg and Rob have just spent a few days at Undara, and will certainly visit again in the future. The savannah wilderness is such an interesting environment with great seasonal variations affecting the grasslands, birdlife and wildlife in general. If you haven't added Undara to your bucket list yet, then look through the photos and make a booking for 2013. Undara could be seen as remote, but the access roads right to the lodge are main sealed highways, and very well formed roads. The attached pictures tell the story better than I can write, but behind the pictures is a very dedicated team of eco tourist operators who go out of their way to assist in every way they can. There is a great variety of accomadation or camping sites for every type of camper. We ... read more

Today we took the Volcanic Valley Tour, a half-day trip around a number of lava tube sites. It started at 08:00 so we had an early bush breakfast with everything. The tour guide told us about the geology and geography of the landscape in the national park and surrounding areas. It turns out that the east coast of Australia is a long fault line that runs from Victoria in the south along the Great Dividing Range up to north Queensland where we are now. This part was stretched and then pushed together many tenths of million of years ago. Some eight to nine million years ago the same part got pressed together to form the mountain range and this sparked volcanic activity in many places. One of the latest volcano’s to erupt was Undara, some 200,000 ... read more

Geo: -18.2763, 144.602Rather than backtrack along the costal highway we wanted to head inland and see a little bit of the Queensland Outback (and spot some Roos in the wild). Having our very own Spaceship allowed us to stop and look around at any point the urge hit us. We tracked a Platypus (unsuccessfully) along a creek in Yungabura, photographed the world's most photographed tree, the Curtain Fig, in a nearby forest, we wandered through the "best mining museum in the southern hemisphere" in Herberton (convincing ourselves in the process that there must be a significant shortage of mining museums in the southern hemisphere) as well as a really nice heritage village in the same town.As we powered our Spaceship along increasingly isolated roads the topology changed dramatically and although we weren't in the Outback highlighted ... read more

DAY 287 Its 5.30am, I can hear a car outside trying to start, I don’t think it is a guest here it is over the way I think possibly has come from the staff quarters, so no doubt someone starting work early. I get back to sleep, with the thought on my mind that today we leave this comfortable and lovely railway carriage to get back into the rough, not that we have a bad bed in the trailer tent, it is just that a proper bed in a proper room is lovely. There is no rush this morning so we lie in a little longer, Andy had already gone to get a cup of tea and then got back into bed, we logged onto the internet to see what was happening on Kangaroo Jack, we ... read more