Monday, Public Holiday, saw us hitting the road again, trying to cover as many k’s as possible to get to Mt Surprise, so as to head to the Undara Lava Tubes the next day. We passed through Croydon and Georgetown; both small, quiet, remote, historic towns. It was a pleasure to come into Mt Surprise, also a small, quiet town but the van park had cool, shady, foresty type sites which easily healed and refreshed the weary Foley travellers. The trees were full of butterflies which were so relaxing to sit and watch. J

Next morning we drove out to the Undara Lava Tubes. We loved the main area, all set out overlooking the bush and surrounded by beautiful old train carriages made new again. We joined the tour and drove through pretty bushland, learning about the landscape and how the area had been owned then sold to the National Parks. A short walk brought us to the entrance to the Lava tubes.

The ‘tubes’ were created by a volcanic eruption 190,000 years ago and are the longest created in the world, stretching for over 164km across the landscape.

It was incredibly interesting to realise that the places where the rooves of the tubes had collapsed and created a huge gully, there was a completely different ecosystem. The land above was flat, dry and completely covered in black basalt rock and small eucalypts. The gully was more like a rainforest and the plants that grew in and up the sides were incapable of living more than a metre out of the gully. The minute we descended it got cooler by degrees, and by the time we reached part of the tubes where the roof was still in tact, called the Archway, it was deliciously cool. The walls of the ‘tube’ were extraordinary, telling the story of time, hundreds of thousands of years ago, of the 3 ‘most recent’ major volcanic eruptions. The cave the tube created was enormous, then we headed deeper into the tunnel, into the dark for about 100 metres. After coming back out we went into another one, this one a huge cavern, the biggest in the world of its kind, where we were able to see tiny microbats.