Thursday, June 26, 2008

Lava Tubes

Undara Lava Tubes - Friday 13 June

We left Archer Creek to backtrack a little more and look at the Millstream Falls, supposedly the widest single drop falls in Australia and then on to Undara Volcanic National Park and the Lava Tubes. We arrived just after lunch but decided to book a tour for the next morning and have some time to relax and do some washing ($2 washing machines here!) and tidying up.


Millstream Falls

A lady from Sydney with her three children camped next to us here, her husband works on rigs and is only home 1 week out of four so she decided to do the trip with the kids and he will meet them on his weeks off! Very brave of her, she was in a 20 year old Jayco about half the size of ours.

The tour through the Lava Tubes was quite amazing, the history of the property very interesting as well. The property was privately owned as a cattle station and when the state government at the time (around 1990) was compulsorily buying propertys as National Parks, the family sold the property but retained a lease to manage the Laa Lodge and tours into the tubes. The tubes were formed one hundred and ninety thousand years ago when lava from the volcanoes spread into the natural contours of the land and then cooled as the lava stopped flowing. They are like massive natural tunnels, quite amazing.... What makes this lava tube formation unique is that it is the longest lava flow on Earth from a single volcanic rate in modern geological time, more than 160kms. It is now broken up into accessible tubes (about 8) and those that have collapsed or are inaccessible due to toxic gases (about 300).

Unfortunately it was very hard to get a good photo because of the poor light but you can check it out at http://undara.com.au if you are interested.


Entrance to 'Stephensons' Lava Tube

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