Stones and bones – Hughenden the start of the Great Australian Dinosaur Trail 31 July - 2 Aug

Before we began this trip we bought a map (we are still using it in Cool George to track our travels).  To help the boys prepare for the trip we gave them flags to put on places they wanted to go.  Some obvious ones came up like seeing a crocodile, theme parks in the gold coast etc.  But one that seemed a long way away was to do Australia’s dinosaur trail.  Well here we are starting our great dinosaur adventure in Hughenden and what better way to start than with a visit with a Muttaburrasauras.

If you have read much of this blog (and if you have yay you!) you will know that I am a total self-confessed science nerd and pretty much always have been.  My favourite toy was my microscope and I loved reading about dinosaurs.  So I will admit that this leg of our trip was exciting for me as it was for the boys. 

As I was growing up Australian dinosaur fossils were few and far between.  That all changed in the 1980s and 1990s with dinosaurs being found in a number of places, including north central Queensland.  Back then this now dry land had an inland sea and the vegetation was lush and green and supported a myriad of dinosaurs.

We started with a visit to the Flinders Information Centre which has a collection of dinosaur material including a full size replica of a muttaburrasauras.  It also has a lot of information of the pastoral history of the area.

Porcupine Gorge

The other reason you come to Hughenden is that 60km up the road is Porcupine Gorge.  We could have done a day trip but we decided that this was another opportunity for a camping adventure so off we went.  The gorge is known as Australia’s little grand canyon, but that may be a bit of a stretch.  It is however, an amazing place, and after our very helpful DVD in the information centre we understood that it has been 600 million years in the making.  

From the camping area there is a steep walk to the bottom of the gorge where you can walk along the bottom towards the Pyramid.    

At the base of the Pyramid we had heard that there might be a place to swim – and fortunately for us there was a lovely swimming pool with a beach!  It should be said this walk is nice enough on the way down, but we may have had to stop a couple of times on the way up and definitely earned our cool drinks.

The camping was great here.  The moon came up well after sunset allowing us to do some lovely stargazing.

In the morning we were up early and did the walk along the rim. 

We stopped at a well known fossicking site on the way back to Hughenden – but no luck for us this day.

Mt Walker

We had just one more stop in Hughenden – Mount Walker boasts six lookouts scanning 360° and stand 478m above sea level. The view from here really shows the country we are now in.  Gone are the winding roads, hills and lush green countryside of the coast.  Here it is flat, dry and brown.  How different it is to be in the outback!

The Really Cool Undara Lava Tubes 29 - 30 July

We are really in the outback now!

Did you know that in the lava tube world Australia, well rocks!  We have an amazing collection of the biggest and best lava tubes in the world.  If you were a lava tube expert you would be hanging out to see our tubes. But wait, do I hear you ask, just what is a lava tube?

To have a lava tube experience you need to travel about 4 hours from Cairns to the Undara National Park.  There are 164 remnant volcano cones and vents in the park.  You can stay just outside the park, however we opted to stay in the park near the lava tubes at the Undara Experience.  The national park falls within a cattle property belonging to the Collins family.  When the national park was declared they retained a business lease to run tours showing people this amazing natural phenomenon.

The Tubes

But I still haven’t answered your question, what is a lava tube.  Well they look like this.

And then you step inside.

 Lava tubes are formed when large flows of lava ran through valleys and the outside of the lava crust cooled it creating a tunnel for which the rest of the hot lava continues to flow through.  These tubes were created over 190,000 years ago and in that time some of the roof sections have collapsed.  This revealed the tubes and created the caves and access ways to the tunnel.  The walls and ceilings of the tubes have these cool patterns, cracks formed in the cooling lava.

The only way to see one is to firstly drive a very long way and then you need to do one of the tours.  Lava tubes are amazingly old and in many ways fragile so there are no guide yourself options.  The Undara Experience offers two tours, the Archway Explorer and the Active Explorer.  We opted for the latter.  Both tours are 2 hours long, the difference being that for the Active Explorer you do need to do a bit of clambering up and down.  

In our second lava tube on this tour you also end up in complete darkness (our photos from that section didn’t work so well) with light only at the beginning and end – you do need to take a torch for this tour and if you have kids like ours they loved it (although they did want to turn their torches on from the beginning).  The tubes are also the home for many microbats as well.

The rest of our Undara Experience

Accommodation at the Undara Experience ranges from tents, through caravans to railway carriages.  Yep, the Collins family have brought out a series of old style railway carriages and converted them into sleeping accommodation.  We of course, stayed in our friend Cool George and to reduce costs cooked our own food.  The boys did have a good swim in the pool (this time I stayed on the edge and read my book).

There are a series of walks around the campground and we opted for the Bluff Walk.  We went in the late afternoon and the views and light were beautiful. 

 

Walking outback style!

 

It seemed somewhat surreal to David and I that we had started out our journey to Undara from the lush, green Millaa Millaa falls, travelled through rain and fog to emerge at this red, dusty, dry quintessential Australian outback experience. And to have changed our experiences from rainforest and reef to outback and rocks.  But we had more outback and more amazing rocks coming our way.

25 - 28 July Atherton Tablelands

So we had left the coast and started by climbing up the road to Mt Molloy and the Atherton Tablelands.  These tablelands are a tapestry of small towns, rich farming country, remnant pockets of rainforest and a myriad of waterfalls, all of which have been formed and built by many ancient volcanos.  Accordingly the Atherton tablelands are like a smorgasboard of diverse things to see and do.  We stayed in Atherton for 5 nights, but you could stay a lot longer as we really only visited a small fraction of what the region has to offer.  On the tablelands the days were a bit cooler, but so were the nights making it a comfortable temperature range even in winter.  However, we did, as usual it seems, have a good couple of days of rain, one of those providing our thickest fogs yet as we drove over the gentle hills to visit volcanic craters and waterfalls.

Remnant rainforests with giant trees

Once this area was carpeted in rainforest, now it is reduced to small pockets, sadly many of these can no longer support species such as cassowaries and musky rats.  The pockets are often built around amazingly large and old trees.  We had seen so many strangler figs on our journey – the boys love them.  It was therefore fitting that we saved the best and biggest for last.

Curtain Fig

Cathedral Fig

A northern leaf tail gecko spotted by Mr C in the Cathedral Fig – 

no mean feat considering the density of the vines

Crystal caves on the mainstreet

A crystal cave on the mainstreet of Atherton – you must be mad.  But no. One of the shops in the main street opens into an amazing labour of love or madness – an artificial set of caves, home of a serious crystal, mineral and fossil collection gathered from all around the world.  This one man has built over 250 metres of false caves and grottos to show off his amazing collection.  If you are looking for natural caves – this is not the place to see them.  But our kids had a great time exploring all the nooks and crannies, reading about the different rocks and crystals and trying to complete a tricky questionnaire.  We had a great time!

A gallery roof of backlit agate slices

Riding ducks and throwing boomerangs

We also had the opportunity now to complete the last leg of our 4 park pass bought so long ago when we were in Cairns earlier and visit the Rainforestation in Kuranda.  The boys had really been looking forward to this visit because they are massive ‘Bushwacked’ fans and when we arrived in the area they had rewatched the Cassowary episode.  The Bushwacked boys had taken a ride on an army duck as part of their hunt for the cassowary and Rainforestation was where the army ducks were.  I will say this place is aimed strongly at the overseas tourist market.  The station is a large property and the price of your ticket gives you access to a number of activities including a guided tour of their animals (which include kangaroos, crocodiles and two feisty, fighting Tasmanian devils), the Pamagirri Aboriginal experience which includes a dance performance and a tour with local indigenous guides and of course a ride on their army ducks (the former army ducks were built between 1942 and 1944 and brought to Australia by the Rainforestion).  The boys had a really good time, they loved the duck ride but equally they enjoyed really learning about boomerangs and didgeridoos.

Craters and waterfalls

The Atherton tablelands have been formed by volcanic activity now obviously extinct.  But there the land was shaped by repeated volcanic eruptions over time, leaving a legacy of hills, crater lakes and fantastically rich soil which supports a wide range of agriculture.  We visited three waterfalls and the smallest crater on a couple of walks.  I would like to add we spent some time getting out of the rain at the Malanda Falls information centre, we popped in to pick up a brochure or two and stayed well over an hour after we discovered it had a wonderful kid and adult friendly interactive centre of information about the region.  This included a volcano the boys could make erupt but taking it through all its stages and a fantastic game about the local tree kangaroos.

Millaa Millaa Falls

Dinner Falls

Malanda Falls

Mt Hypipamee Crater

We drove off from Millaa Millaa falls through rain and dense fog – little did we know that this was the last rain we would see for a very long time.  We were now heading for the outback.