<b>Savannah Tour – Heat, Lava Tubes and Emus</b>

Well we couldn't come all the way to Australia without travelling inland and experiencing the savannah. This landscape consisted of short widely spaced trees, red termite mounds and heat. The area is mineral rich and fossicking for gems is still a popular activity. Large cattle ranches are found in this area and we saw many a "caution –cattle on road" sign. I personally like the large signs on the road to Cooktown showing a truck colliding with a large bull. I think they make a bigger impact on drivers.

 

 
We left Kuranda and travelled west to Georgetown. Along the way we again encountered a wild fire burning down to the road edge. The smoke was rising rather than drifting across the road so we continued travelling. Australians seem much more casual about bush fires than we are in Canada. We saw no fire fighters, no water bombers or any sign that anyone was going to fight the fire. I believe they just let them burn out as long as the fires don’t threaten any large settlement.

 

 
The road was under construction. A narrow one lane paved road was being widened in sections, so we would alternate about every twenty kilometres between a narrow paved road and a wider gravel surface under construction. We met the notorious road trains on this stretch of the highway. Road trains are trucks about 150 feet long that travel at high speed and don’t move off the narrow pavement – we do (apparently they have priority but who is going to argue with a 150 foot truck travelling at high speed anyway!?). So when we saw one of these large trucks armoured with kangaroo mashing grills we slowed right down and moved well on to the shoulder as the truck roared by. Apparently these road trains are built to travel through outback roads which can be covered in six inches of red coloured “bull dust”, so you can imagine what a road train barrelling toward you in the middle of the road through bull dust must look like, enough to strike terror in the hearts of people driving small vehicles. 
 
 

 
We finally made it to Georgetown unharmed by cows, fire or road trains. We pulled into the parking lot of TerrEstrial, a museum housing samples of the many gems and minerals mined in the surrounding area. As we opened the car doors and were struck by a 43 degree temperature and blast furnace wind. We made our way to TerrEstrial and found it was closed. This is always a risk at the end of the tourist season but this time it was my error in how I read the hours of operation. All was not lost. Our timing was perfect to experience a large emergence Old Crow butterflies. They are a dark coloured, rather plain butterfly but made up in sheer numbers what they lacked in butterfly charm.
 

 

We got into the car and travelled back down the same road to Mount Surprise and our place for the night - Bed Rock City (yeah I know, but it was the only accommodation open with a vacancy). Just outside of Mount Surprise, we were surprised, by the sight of father Emu and a couple of kids out for a stroll along the highway. We jumped out of the car camera in hand and managed to get a few shots of the emu family before they climbed up the road bank and made their way into the bush. Emus are much like cassowaries in that Dad raises the kids. Australian men may have a reputation for being tough outback rednecks but the large tough Australian male birds seem very progressive in their thinking and share family rearing responsibilities with the females.
 


 
We felt very fortunate to have seen both of Australia’s large native birds - cassowaries and emus (emus are almost as tall as ostriches) - and both with families. What a thrill!

 
It was now almost early evening and we thought we would stop to top up the gas tank. The service station attendant was spraying the area around the pumps with water. We asked if he had gasoline for sale and he said yeah but we might not be able to pump it into our tank. Apparently his gas pumps had vapour locked because of the heat and now that the temperature dropped to just below 40 degrees he hoped to cool things down with the water hose so the pumps would work again. I gave it a try and managed to pump 68 cents worth of gas. He chuckled and said the guy previous to us got 20 cents worth. Fortunately we didn’t really need more gas to get to the next town, so we wished him well and left. He didn’t charge us for the gas.
 

That evening we found that we were lodged in the heart of the Galah gathering area. Galahs, also called rose-breasted cockatoos, are lovely looking birds all dressed in a frontal light pink colour wash. The origin of their name has been attributed to an Aborigine word but also to an Australian word for “loud mouthed idiot”. I was feeling really good about seeing one, then all his/her friends arrived and soon we were watching a tree full of about two dozen Galahs all preening and getting ready for the evening. 
 

 
 


 In the morning they congregated in the same tree and again were preening and primping and getting ready for another busy Galah day (I wonder if a tree full of Galahs can be called a Galah Galah Do?).

 

In the morning, we made our way to Undara Volcanic National Park. As we were leaving Mount Surprise we lucked out again and saw a group of four Bustards right by the roadside. Bustards are the largest flying birds in Australia with males weighing up to 32 pounds. Given the weight and appearance it is no wonder Aborigines call them “bush turkeys” and hunt them for meat.
 
 
 

We arrived at Undara just in time for our guided tour. Undara is renowned for its lava tubes, possibly the longest in the world at 123 km. The lava tubes formed when the Undara volcano erupted about 190,000 years ago spewing lava across the landscape. The molten rock flowed down the gently sloping terrain. The flow was slow enough that the surface of the lava crusted over insulating and forming a casing for the flowing molten lava within. The casing solidified and the lava flowed out the other end forming what looks like an abandoned subway system complete with tunnels and large open caverns that resemble abandoned underground subway stations.

  

 
Over time weaker sections of the tunnels and caverns collapsed leaving the sunken tunnels open to the sky. The tunnels funnel water during rainstorms to areas of collapsed caverns providing an ideal habitat for vine thicket vegetation. Now vine thicket vegetation is a much greener colour than the surrounding savannah vegetation and related to very ancient plant species (ancestors of vine thicket vegetation first appeared on our planet over 300 million years ago). When you look at an aerial photo of Undara, the lava tubes can be clearly traced by following the pattern of green vegetation in the collapsed lava tubes as they snake across the countryside.

 
Our guide took us into three separate enclosed caverns accessed through collapsed portions of the lava tubes. The caverns and collapsed lava tubes are home to Mareeba rock wallabies, bats and a variety of insects and spiders (about 50 species of animals have been identified in the caverns). We were fortunate and caught a glimpse of the rare Mareeba rock wallaby and saw a small colony of bats (these are small ones like we have in Canada and not the giant flying foxes). The air quality can be poor in the deeper caverns with much higher concentrations of carbon dioxide than we normally breathe. The caverns themselves are quite spectacular which you can see by following the link below.

<a href="https://www.google.ca/search?q=undara+lava+tubes&rlz=1C1SFXN_enCA498CA498&es_sm=93&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=cquLVM6yG4nXoAT2joGYCg&ved=0CDUQsAQ&biw=1169&bih=568" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.ca/search?q=undara+lava+tubes&rlz=1C1SFXN_enCA498CA498&es_sm=93&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=cquLVM6yG4nXoAT2joGYCg&ved=0CDUQsAQ&biw=1169&bih=568</a>

Oddly enough some of the caverns fill with rain water during the wet season. Visitors don bathing suits and explore the flooded caverns, a whole different experience than one gets in the hot dry season.
 

Before becoming a park, Undara was part of a large cattle station (ranch) called Rosella Plains. When the government bought out the Collins family, owners of the ranch, they negotiated a deal to set up and operate the Undara Experience a tourist accommodation and tour guiding business just outside the park. It seems they knew what they were doing. The Collins family now make way more money “herding people” then they ever did ranching!

 
The Eastern Grey Kangaroos and Pretty Faced Wallabies have become accustomed to visitors and can be found along the road and all around the tourist facilities at Undara. We were able to get a close look at these animals and some good photos.