Gismo Queen and her King

Day 9 - Mount Surprise and Undara

We could have actually had a sleep in this morning but Queenslanders get up early, and therefore so does everyone else in Queensland. So we too got up and had a lovely capuccino (yep, coffee machne is back in action) sitting outside.  After showering in our temporarily patched shower we enjoyed the luxury of breakfast out, as the cafe here at the caravan park offers a fine breakfast. Greg had the Bedrock Burger and I had Wilma's Posh Breakfast - as you do. I thought I'd try their coffee and had my reservations as the "barista" is a Wwoofer (Willing Workers On Organic Farms Employment R(something)) and was a young Korean bloke. He did OK.

We then headed back 50km to the Undara Lava Tubes, where we were booked in for the ArchWay Explorer Tour. This is the best time of year to come as it isn't busy yet and so there were only four of us on the tour and the tourguide was informative and a lot of fun. We went into three lava tubes, which were each amazing in their own right.

The Archway is a partly (mostly) collapsed lava tube but has the most amazingly coloured rocks on the roof. Apparently each morning the wildlife comes down into the water source just behind this arch - and yes, they use the boardwalk and steps too!

We then went into the Yumeron Tube, which was a bit longer (deeper) and not as tall/wide. It got quite dark in the end and was lovely and cool. The temperature inside the lava tubes is a constant 25C.


We both very much enjoyed this tour and would highly recommend a visit here. It's only three hours from Cairns so quite accessible.

We headed back into Mount Surprise for lunch, and did a quick tour of the town (that didn't take long) and filled up with fuel before returning to Bedrock Village. We had a pleasant lunch out the front of our van before I settled into some home duties and Greg listened to a book. I made banana cakes in the DreamPot with our bananas that got "mushed" in yesterday's bumpy ride and they turned out beautifully. I had to make them in mugs as I don't have the loaf tins that DreamPot sell but I was very impressed with them. I'll even be able to freeze one for our next few afternoon teas. I then cleaned inside the van (where's my cleaning lady when I need her?) using my fabulous 12V vaccuum cleaner (that was the only fun part). We had afternoon tea and planned our next couple of days before ordering wood fired pizzas that they make here in Bedrock Village twice a week (demand must be good as they have 56 on order for tonight!!), Undoubtedly it will be better than our pizza in Longreach the other day but we'll let you know tomorrow,

posted by Tracey @ 7:11 pm