Lava tube, Mt Surprise, Normanton

Again, I was without internet. So the tenses are going to be a it all over the place. 

First some pictures. 

Dinner at the rest area back near Ravenshoe. 

The bit that broke off my speedo cable. 

A leaf with eyes. 

Well, the Undara lava tubes were amazing. I did not expect that. I thought it was a family exploiting some glorified caves they found on their property. Turns out they kept the tubes secret for years and when word got out about them and people started illegally visiting, they developed the site in order to protect it and sold over half their property to fund it. Which I'd say has probably worked out well for them financially.

The tubes were formed when Undara volcano erupted. It spewed out 1000 cubic metres of lava per second. That's a blob 10 metres wide, long and high every second (sorry to mansplain but I do think some of you are stupid). Some of the lava created a regular above ground lava flow until it hit the Esley River, where it continued along the river bed for 100km. That means it flowed for 167km, making it the longest known lava flow from a single eruption.

This is an aerial view. You can see a bunch of craters. There is a green broken line from the Undara cave to Stephenson cave. That is a single lava tube. The green bits are where it has collapsed. 

Some of the lava found its way into an underground river and followed it.The lava on the outside touching the earth solidified quickly while the rest continued to flow through leaving behind these amazing rock tubes. The entire thing is underground, but the roof has caved in at around 300 different spots. Where these collapses occur is where you can access some of the tubes. Most of the collapses completely cover the tube entrances but there have been 69 found. 

These collapses create something almost as incredible. Inside the gorges these collapses create, rainforests spring up. Technically they are vine thickets, but they looked like rainforest to me. Little patches about 100 metres across for as far as the collapse goes, in amongst dry Eucalypt savannah. Little wallabies thrive in these forests and at night they sneak out and eat the grass on the edge, creating a natural fire break.

Wtf is this tree doing here? 

When we arrived at the archway, which is a section where both ends had collapsed, my eyes had trouble focusing. The rock is mottled brown, red, white and pink. The brown is just rock, the white is calcium, the pink is magnesium and the red is iron oxide. It creates the effect of shadows so at first I couldn't really make out what I was seeing.

The archway

We went through down into a lava tube until we got to the end, where a calcium deposit had formed on the wall that looked like the Bundy bear. Although the tube hit a dead end, the lava had actually flowed off a waterfall in this underground river! The tube continued down but has filled up with soil.

Looking back to the entrance. 

Can you see the Bundy bear face (a polar bear for the non-Australians/non-alcoholics) 

We went back to the other end of the collapse to visit the largest (in diameter) tube that has been found. It was found by the stations drunk helicopter pilot who was flying over and saw a dark patch so he landed his helicopter and went searching with a cigarette lighter as his source of light. It was named after him (Tully's Lava Tube) but then the station had a new manager who renamed it after himself. So it is Stephenson's Lava Tube now.

At the end eucalyptus roots had penetrated the roof of the cave and were hanging down. Eventually they will fracture the rock and cause another collapse, and another rainforest will grow.

Roots hanging from the roof. 

The entire place was amazing. David Attenborough visited and said it should be the 8th wonder. I think he's dished out about a dozen 8th wonders (fairly sure the Daintree was another one). I expected so little from it but it is the best natural site I've seen.

After the tour wrapped up I went to the crater nearby. It wasn't the volcano that created the tubes. I walked to the top and it kind of just looked like I'd walked up a hill. There were a lot of trees so I could just make out the other side. I flew the drone up (despite a warning saying I'm too close to an airport...) and it looked far more crater like from the sky.

Now I'm at Mt Surprise. I think the surprise is that there is no mountain. It is flat as. There were about 30 eagles/hawks/falcons/kites drifting around the camp. I watched some smaller birds fly up to attack them. The big birds weren't even bovvered.

The camp here is surprisingly nice. There is a big possibility that I'll stay tomorrow night as well

Yep, I'm staying tonight. I met some nice older campers when I went to scab some electricity off them last night. I sat with them for a while.

Today I did very little. Mapped out petrol stations on maps.me. If it is accurate i will only need petrol at a couple of places. The problem is some of the petrol stations only sell diesel.

Well, NOW I'm at Normanton. I rode across today. 400km. Not much of interest happened, except I saw these massive brolgas. They're like a metre tall at least. 

I'm camped in Normanton and a bloke from Newcastle named Mango arrived and has camped with me. He's a fairly interesting character. A musician and a writer amongst other things. He's riding a Harley. He is supposed to be writing an article for a British magazine about 3 poms in their 70s riding around Australia. Except they all pulled out so he is doing the trip himself with no subject to write about! 

The problem for him is the accomodation had been booked, so he has had to honour that. It cost him $200 a night for 4 rooms across the Nullarbor, and there was only one of him. I would've slept a quarter of the night in each room. I think that is the only section he had to cover. 

He also showed me a little mini doco the abc made about him and his music. He has done pretty well with it. Really interesting bloke. 

Now I'm laying here listening to a couple have a prolonged swearing match. 

I think I'll go from here to Burketown. It is 130km of dirt. When I pulled up today I noticed water on my boot. I had previously noticed it in Cooktown. Apparently when my bike gets hot, a little squirt of water comes from this tube between the radiator and the engine. It's like a pinhole develops. Not much water. The weird thing is, when it cools down it isn't leaking. What I'm saying is, I have a water leak. I think I'll see if I can sikoflex it closed and continue on. It has come from at least Cooktown to here with that leak. That's 1000km or so. She'll be right.