May 12, Undara National Park, Ravenshoe

The campground in Mount Surprise offered tours in Undara NP, but the tour we wanted didn't have enough people so it was cancelled. We hustled around and got a tour from a company in the park. We drove into Undara NP. The lodge there was charming. There was a campground and tent rooms, but most of the accommodations were in railroad cars. The dining area and reception were also fashioned from railroad cars. They had complimentary tea and coffee, so we had a rest until the tour started.
We met a couple from Cairns. She was from Seattle, but had been here 15 years. He gave us some ideas about what to see around Cairns. We mentioned the miles we've put on the motorhome and he said they drove 2000km in one week!

Undara NP has the longest lava tubes in the world. Lava tubes form when lava flows slowly enough for the top crust to cool while the inner lava keeps flowing. Because of the unique geology, the lava was flowing down a 2 percent grade. One tube extends 160km or about 100miles. The longest outside of Australia is in Hawaii and is 22 miles long.

We learned about the geology of Undara and the plants. The guide, Curt, stopped at a group of eucalyptus saplings. He cut a golf ball sized thing off a sapling. It was a gall, made when wasp stung the tree and laid an egg in the stem, leaving the stinger. The tree reacted to the stinger and tried to heal that cut by covering it with tissue. The egg grew and the tree kept producing tissue and finally the gall was a ball of tissue enclosing a grub. Curt carefully cut the gall open and exposed the grub. He cut the grub out with some of the tissue and offered it to the group. One brave woman ate it and said it tasted like pecan.

We saw some micro bats in one tube and they also have ghost bats, the only meat eating bats in the country. Curt was a great guide and we were happy it worked out for us to take his tour.

The countryside here is gulf savannah, nice sized trees and wide grasslands. There is a grass here called Sword grass, that has long, very thin spikes. When the pioneers tried to raise sheep here, they found that the spikes burrowed into the wool and into the sheep, giving them blood infections. So, they raise cattle here.

We left the NP and drove east through hills and up in elevation. (At one point yesterday we were at -230m). We stopped at Millcreek Falls, the widest falls in Australia. There was a lizard (iguana? goanna?) in the picnic area there, about 3 feet long. He didn't pay any attention to us.

Then we stopped at the information center at Ravenshoe. (Not, raven -shoe, as we thought, but ravens hoe). It is the highest town in Queensland at 900m or 2950ft. The gentleman there was a wealth of information on this area, called the Atherton tableland. The landscape here is very hilly with lush growth under the trees. We drove past some dairy farms, too.

It started raining! The first rain we've seen in weeks. And it started getting foggy, so we stopped early at a lookout. Someone else just stopped here too.

Pictures - Undara dining area, Curt with a cork tree, Vegetation outside a lava tube, Lava tube with walkway thru it, Basket spider web, Grub in gall - out of focus, Iguana, Millstream Falls