Undara lava tubes and Cobbold Gorge are tourism magnets
Three remarkable geological wonders can be explored in a remote corner of northern Queensland.
So where’s this mountain that’s made all the fuss, we ask guide Wes as we survey the landscape from a bluff in North Queensland’s Undara Volcanic National Park. There are several likely suspects on the cone-dotted plains in front of us. “No, you can’t see it from here,” he says, pointing east with an arched arm to indicate it’s well over the horizon. We wouldn’t make it out anyway, as it’s barely 20m above the outback savannah plain.
Mt Undara is no Vesuvius or Krakatoa, but this prehistoric pimple has left its mark. “It didn’t explode, it oozed,” says Wes of the eruption 190,000 years ago, which released a flow that created one of the longest single-source lava tubes on the planet. After bubbling out over three weeks, the 1200C molten rock crept along for about eight months in two distinct tracks that finished 90km and 160km from Undara, a local Ewamian word meaning “long way”. As the top layer cooled and formed a crust, the lava drained off, leaving these record-breaking tubes.
We meet Wes at Undara Experience, a bush resort beside the national park 260km southwest of Cairns. The tubes can be visited only on official tours, and given they’re home to bats, pythons and certain nasties, we’re to hang off his every word and deed. The tubes’ roof has collapsed in many places, with the longest section, the 1.3km Bayliss Cave, being inaccessible. Nine sections are open, and we’re visiting three.
Remnant Gondwanaland rainforest thrives in collapsed sections below the plain, protected from the fires that dictate the savannah’s ecology. “It’s one unique little ecosystem, each collapse has one,” says Wes at our first stop, the Archway, an 18m-high tube open at both ends and a veritable hanging garden.
Given other collapses, Wes reassures one guest that “you’d need an earthquake” to cause another, and we move through the Archway into Ewamian Cave, its surface a craggy collage of caramel swirls and streaks. What might be rock art is actually calcium carbonate, with no evidence that the Ewamian ever used the caves. Flame torches would have caused lethal pollution, and with no food in the cave, why come? Nor are there any Ewamian stories because, ruefully, there’s a gap in the history from when white settlers came. The one story Wes remembers is “the only time we had swimming tours here”, courtesy of Cyclone Yasi in 2011.
We move to Stephenson Cave, its 35m-wide entrance guarded by a huge Moreton Bay fig. The air is bad down here due to dangling tree roots dumping carbon dioxide, and at certain times of the year, such as today, you don’t enter. “This is magic and scary,” says Wes as, descending the stairs, he holds steady his testing device: a $2 cigarette lighter. When the flame visibly separates from the lighter, we go no further.
Wes also guides the sunset tour, a story in three chapters: macropod-spotting (we mainly see pretty-faced wallabies and wallaroos) then hilltop bubbles and nibbles overlooking the darkening savannah before Wes announces: “It’s off to the Bat Cave.” This is another collapsed tube, and microbats stream all around the entrance, just discernible in the dark. All torches are extinguished to allow the bats to resettle, then Wes switches his back on, stoking the creatures into life so we can get a quick look at their escape to the far end of the cave.
Our attention turns to a striped python hanging from a tree and waiting to dine on any morsel that comes into reach. But with amazing radar that allows bats to navigate caves in pitch black without hitting the sides or each other, they’d be unlucky to meet this fate.
Fortunately for the intrepid traveller, Cobbold Gorge, another savannah geological phenomenon 225km to the southwest, is more easily accessible. Not that too many people knew about it until a few decades ago, when Simon Terry, scion of the area’s cattle dynasty, got to wondering what was beyond their favourite swimming hole on the property. Terry and his mates dragged a tinny to the creek, went around the bend and found a mini-wonderland.
Cobbold is Queensland’s youngest gorge, only 10,000 years old, during which time nature has been able to carve out a squiggling fissure on the sandstone that’s barely 2m wide in places along its 850m length. But it still takes almost an hour in an electric boat to navigate both ways, and at times guide Jaimes asks a guest to use his walking stick to bump us away from the walls streaked in red, black and gold.
Rainfall is estimated to take 30 years to seep through the porous sandstone into the creek, and subsequently the water level never drops. And there are some interesting residents. Golden orb spiders are known to span the gorge with webs that resemble heavily tatted lace. On the walls are St Andrew’s cross spiders, perched just out of reach of the squirting archerfish. As we slow for Duck Rock – as in “duck” because it hangs low – a tiny saw-shell turtle suns itself on a ledge.
We pass under a modern footprint at Cobbold, a glass bridge connecting a walking loop on either side that’s part of this three-hour tour. Jaimes explains some bush tucker, from what to enjoy, such as the unmistakeable flavour of the licorice bush leaves, to what to avoid, such as the little red seeds of the gidgee-gidgee, one of which would kill us. In a narrow cleft, we’re semi-swamped by black and white common crow butterflies.
It’s easy to see why the gorge remained unknown until Terry went exploring in 1992. Without that distinctive bridge, it could be just another crack in a landscape that from the air resembles a hotchpotch of unseparated scones.
We’re getting this perspective on Cobbold’s helicopter tour, where pilot Abi takes up to three passengers, a substantial picnic of cheeses, salami, olives and pickled cucumbers, plus our wine and beer of choice, on a parabolical tour of the country before landing at Sunset Rock. She leaves us be for half an hour while we sup and toast the sinking sun. Then we return to base in just a few minutes, scooting low over the sandstone. The way back is easily found, marked by the last rays glistening off that bridge over Cobbold water.
It’s a bumpy and dusty drive back up to the Savannah Way highway, and breaking the return to Cairns with a restorative soak appeals. Talaroo Hot Springs, an Ewamian enterprise about halfway between Cobbold and Undara, is one of only two terraced hot springs in Australia.
Talaroo is visited with an Ewamian guide, who gives us their cultural and scientific significance, plus a crash course in living off this country. We’re then given the option of soaking in the large communal pool or in one of several smaller pools and take the latter, wallowing in a lovely spa de deux.
In the know
The lava tubes are accessible only through Undara Experience, which has caravan, camping and glamping sites, modern homestead cabins, family units plus railway carriage suites, created by original owner Gerry Collins, a train buff. It’s not glamorous, but considering the remote location, it’s perfectly adequate and comfortable. There’s a licensed bistro and an excellent bush breakfast on offer; just don’t let swooping kookaburras steal your sausage.
Cobbold Gorge is on private land and tours must be booked through Cobbold Village, a modern family-oriented bush resort of a similar standard to Undara, with several levels of accommodation, bistro and horizon pool.
Talaroo Hot Springs is open 6am-6pm. It has a small cafe plus caravan and glamping setups.
Jeremy Bourke was a guest of Tourism and Events Queensland.