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Undara Volcanic National Park

 

Yet another wonderful national park, Australia does the parks so well, and this one was lovely.  We learned about lava tubes.  We had never even heard of lava tubes before we came here.  This is what we learned.

 

There are 2 kinds of volcano – scoria cones are  pointy like a limpet, and spit out rocks, gases and ash (I think Bromo where we went in Java is one of these).  The other type is a shield cone – much wider and flatter and spews out lava.  The lava runs down in streams which solidify on the outside, and the inside stays molten and continues to flow till it’s all run away, leaving an empty tube.  They get buried by more flows, or more may run through them and sculpt the inside, and they only become accessible if their roofs collapse.

 

Based on this explanation, what we expected to see was some rock burrows into the ground – but no, they are vast rock cathedrals 80m high, miles long, some with water in the bottom which you can wade through.  The great pits formed where the roofs have collapsed house pockets of rainforest amid the arid land.  (although this is the wet season they are rainless for months in the dry).  Tiny carnivorous bats and invertebrates live there and visitors like snakes and kangaroos, but little else.  There are no cave paintings because there is no permanent water, but the sculpting of the walls is so dramatic it doesn’t need any decoration.

 

Later we walked around the volcanic rim, avoiding a bush fire which was close, but moving slowly across the grass, and from that vantage point you can look for miles across a landscape studded with volcanic cones.  What a great place!