The Undara Experience/Expensive

Many people we met along the way recommended the lava tubes as a must see! Now, my experience of lava tubes are the floating colour in the glass tubes – so my expectation of Undara was along these lines......

Once upon a time the Collins family farmed thousands of acres. One day the government of the day – Labour came along and wanted the Colllins family land-they could see potential. Alas, the Collins family had to sell their land which had been in their family for 6 generations.

Mr 6th generation Collins came to an agreement? With the government-he would retain some of the land on a  75 year lease , utilize the lava tubes into a tourist paying venture. The National  Parks and Recreations would have the remaining acres.

The lava tubes have always been there, but it wasn’t until the 1970’s that scientists began to take an interest in them and in the 1990’s the Collins family developed this natural phenomena into a money making venture. At $16pp per night to camp and $50 each for a 2hr tour-it won’t take too long.

Also firewood is not supplied here - $7.50 for a small bag – how lucky we were to be given our neighbours pile he had collected on the way in.

Unfortunately the only way to see these tubes is on a tour either from here at the resort or from Mt Surprise you can join a local tour. Undara is 15 kms off the Savannah Way between Mt Surprise and Ravenshoe.

 The lava tubes were formed 190,000 years ago from a volcanic eruption. It is like walking into a tunnel like cave, except  instead of rock it is coral like lava layers with tree roots hanging down. We saw little bats hanging from the ceiling of the caves, and tree roots growing down into the lava tunnels. The day we went was cold – it was our first day of cloud and showery weather.

'down in the tube-looking back to the steps'

The ‘resort’  has renovated railway carriages set in a quad – restaurant and bar. Meal prices are expensive for food that has been reheated in a microwave or similar. Soft mushy chips mixed in with local midges – is not ‘resort’ standard.

We walked to the Kalkani Volcano – a 2.5km round trip – nothing spectacular. The campsites have kangaroos and their joeys jumping around. The local currawong population welcomed us – standing outside our van chirping for food. The reminded us of the magpie – you couldn’t leave any food out-they ripped into everything.

Not our van!

 Would I come again or would I look at lava tubes again – NO!, been there done that!