Undara Lava Tubes

We’re now heading west across the Queensland outback. We camped in a region of dry rainforest. In contrast to the lush rainforest on the coast, a dry rainforest (or vine thicket) only gets rain during the wet season, rather than all year. The trees are much smaller but the complete canopy cover is there.

Moving on, the landscape has changed to grass savannah with a thin scattering of low trees with grass growing underneath and numerous pointy termite mounds. It feels very remote and we hardly meet any vehicles apart from the occasional road train. In places, the road is singe-track, so we basically chicken out and stop in the ditch if one comes the other way.

This was as a volcanic region as evidenced by the pink granite and the low pointy hills.We stopped for a tour of the Undara lava tubes. These tubes were formed by slow moving lava, cooling on the outside first. The tubes have roof falls along them and these allow pockets of rainforest to grow. The longest tube here is 160km and is thought to be the longest in the world.