UNDARA LAVA TUBES

We stopped at the Undara Volcanic National Park on the Savannah Way near Mt. Surprise to visit the amazing lava tubes, created about 190,000 years ago when the Undara Volcano erupted violently. Its molten lava flowed quickly through the low points in the landscape, that being the valleys and river beds. As the top outer layer cooled and formed a crust, the fiery magma below drained outwards leaving a series of long, dark, hollow tubes, the ones we visited were about 30 metres round. Parts of the tops of these tubes collapsed over time and created fertile pockets where now rainforest thrives, it is quite an amazing place. Unfortunately it is a closed National Park and therefore we had to pay quite a lot of money for an organised tour. Our tour guide had the personality of a brick, continually using food analogies like; “See the layers on the walls there where the lava was flowing? Imagine a bowl of pumpkin soup or a pint of Guinness. When you are finished the soup, the side of the bowl shows you evidence of where the soup once was”. Fair Dinkum Sherlock?? Or; “Think of the lava tubes as a bar of chocolate with soft caramel inside, the centre staying runny while the outside is hard”. Mate, if it was a bar of chocolate wouldn’t the lava melt the outer casing??