Undara Lava Tubes and Kalkani Crater Walk – The Adventures of Nick and Pam

It was time to check out another recommendation from our Simpson Desert trip leader, Dave from the Sydney Jeep Club (hi Dave!), Undara National Park. We didn’t really know anything about Undara before visiting except “lava tubes”, and you’re probably wondering the same as us now, what on earth is a lava tube?

This, friends, is a lava tube! Or at least part of one.

Well, lucky for you all, I’m here to educate and inspire. A lava tube is a geological phenomenon created when slow-moving lava exposed to air solidifies, but lava continues to flow below the surface, leaving a subterranean hollow tube once no more lava flows.

Undara formerly was a privately-run tourist operation on a cattle station called “Rosella Plains”, until the area was gazetted as a National Park in 1993. The campground, caravan park, and most tours are still run by the original family business “Undara Experience”. We stayed at the campground here and signed up for a paid tour, and were very happy with both.

Another awesome sunset over our campsite at Undara Experience

We call these types of excursions “meatbagging”, after hearing the term on a podcast we’re listening to called “Let’s Not Panic” (a couple our age travels through South America with their 4wd and rooftop tent – it’s great to listen to on long drives between destinations). The term “meatbagging” refers to organised, paid tours, which often have a formula something like this:

Line up in a touristy shop full of souvenirs to buy your ticket
Buy your ticket for slightly (or a lot) more than you thought you’d have to pay
Show up at a designated time with a bunch of other tourists like yourself
Show your ticket to a guide who is wearing a uniform with the tour operator’s logo featured prominently
Board a bus with all of the other tourists
Be driven to a destination with the guide giving commentary over the loudspeaker on the bus
Get off the bus, gather around the guide for more commentary
Walk to another sight
Gather around the guide for more commentary
Etc

So basically, you’re being schlepped around as though you’re simply a bag of meat. Meatbagging!

Even though the term meatbagging has a negative connotation, a meatbag tour can still be totally awesome, and this one definitely was. Our guide was knowledgeable and friendly, happy to answer questions, and genuinely interested in the subject matter at hand.

The lava tubes at Undara are the longest known continuous lava tubes in the world at about 160km long. Only a few kilometres are open to the public, due to very poor air quality and poor access points to the tubes. We visited two parts of a lava tube – Wind Tunnel, which is the partially collapsed tube in the photo at the beginning of this post, and Mikoshi Cave, which is a longer portion of complete tube.

As you can imagine, there isn’t much light in a cave, so our photos from Mikoshi Cave are only of the interesting cave life the guide highlighted – like these cane toads (an invasive species with poisonous glands on its back – the local bird and lizard life has started to learn to flip these guys over to eat them, but they were devastating the native wildlife for a long while first)…

…and this purple moth that vibrates when it’s threatened (the vibration messes with bat sonar – check out our instagram for a video of the moth actually vibrating!).

All in all, pretty interesting stuff and well worth the price of admission for the guided tour.

There are many many dormant volcanos in this area of Queensland, and about 15km away from Undara is another one called Kalkani. There’s a self-guided 3km walk up to the top and around the rim, which we of course hit up the day after our tour.

Two more distant volcanos that are thought to have erupted about 200,000 to 400,000 years ago

You’ll notice a whole lot of GREEN in these photos – we’re not really in the Outback anymore, but the roads can still be red dirt and the plant life sparse in between areas of lush vegetatian. This area of Australia is called the Dry Tropics – it’s not quite rainforest but it’s certainly not desert. We’ve really enjoyed the warmth and humidity, and the interesting plant life around us. It’s been highs of 25 to 30 during the day, and lows of 11 to 15 at night…so perfect for camping!

Our MVP this week is our friend Dave Grime, we’ve mentioned him a few times in this blog already but he’s really been such a huge help with all of our trip planning. He helped us plan our two month trip last year, he planned and lead the Simpson Desert Trip this year, and he was the one who told us about Undara. He has a real passion for Australia, has taken many trips himself, and loves passing along his knowledge to others. He cares deeply that everyone has a great time and his main concern when he broke down in the Simmo was that all of the other Jeep Club members on the trip still went on to complete the itinerary. On top of all that, he is a genuine, happy, kind person and we’re very glad to know him.

Dave, helping us plan in a pub in the outback – the best venue for planning to be sure!

So, Where Exactly Is This?
Here’s a screenshot of this leg of the journey from WikiCamps! The red is what we’ve already covered, and the green is what was featured in the post you just read. You can also follow us live at this link – our satellite device pings our shared map frequently.