Day 67

Georgetown - Mt Surprise - Undara Lava tubes - Innot Hot Springs

"cause I, I am going to explode, detonator set to go, I'll be human volcano...."

We left the pretty Georgetown to continue our journey East towards the coast this morning. The Gulf Development Road is a mixture of narrow dual lane roads and narrow single lane roads. Always fun when the road trains come flying thru on the single lane when you're towing a van!

We stopped at Mt Surprise - which isn't a mountain at all. The Mt stands for mining town and it's a fossicking and gem stone paradise. White Topaz and Sapphires are in abundance apparently here. The kids bought some sample topaz and then we bought a bucket of dirt to try our luck fossicking for Sapphires. We must have picked the right bucket cause we picked out rough sapphires galore along with some white topaz, agate and some blackjack.

As we drove into Mt Surprise there is a free under vehicle wash bay that you drive thru. It's to keep the Gulf Savannah free from weeds and other nasties that travel in caught up in the cars but for us it was a great way to clean all the dirt sprayed up onto the Disco and van from all the roadwork that was going on - we went thru twice just to make sure they both were clean!

From there it was onto the Undara Volcanic National Park and the Lava Tubes. It was a shame that we couldn't stay there as it was a beautiful place - railway carriages from the late 1800's with original interior meets bush at the resort and the camping grounds were great too. Peak season though and the vans won't fit on an unpowered site there unfortunately.

We had lunch and then did a tour of 3 of the lava tubes. There are 60 odd sections of the tubes spanning the 160kms that the lava flowed over from the Undara volcano 190,000 years ago. They only use 9 of the tubes too for tourist and scientific purposes. Walking over the top of them, you dont even know they exist!

We left Undara to drive another 100ks to the Innot Hot Springs which is our stop tonight. The Nettle River is a hot thermal river and they pump the water into a number of pools of varying degree temperature - hottest one is 48 degrees!

We walked across the river tonight to the pub on the other side and had a great country style meal in a great country pub - the Hot Springs Hotel! The kids meals were huge and as they were starving they shoveled their meals down in no time. Cobey having yet another serving of Karumba caught fish - King Salmon this time. Because they ate all their dinner and obviously impressed the pub owner in doing so, she promptly offered free ice cream to them - accepted without a second thought too!!

I may be back up this way in October to pick up the quad-bike were going to win in the raffle!

We walked back across the river and had another swim in the steaming hot water before calling it a night.

Tomorrow, after another swim, we farewell Corinne's parents who are heading for home while we continue onto Cairns for a few nights.

We're not ready to come home yet.....not at all actually.