View of the campsite at Undara
Narrow leaf Ironbark trunk. Apparently resists fire extremely well
Bootlace Oak named for obvious reasons. (Hakea)
Bootlace Oak flower
Corky Acacia (i think)
Hi Everyone,
Lot's of video and photos to be sorted out for today's blog so i will be square eyed by the time it is finished. Once again we were up at dawn with the temperature around 22C very pleasant. I took some tree pictures and identified some of the trees around our camp site using the descriptions in our "Plant List for Undara" I noted number 26 was Dead Dog Tree Canis Mortis "Has no bark hahahaha" very funny.
Mid morning we joined our tour of the Ungara lava tubes (well 2 of them). The tubes are large caves formed in a lava flow. As i understood it the statistics are as follows. The total lava flow from the Undara volcano was 164km of which 100km had a tube structure and of that around 8km remains. It is the longest lava flow in the world. As the lava flowed the outside skinned and when the flow stopped the molten lava left in the middle ran out the end. It was pretty spectacular. We visited 2 tubes both of which are considerably flooded in the wet season. The second tube had a few small bats. Unfortunately many of the pictures and video reflected the skill of the operator but they give an idea of the scale. There is more information here. Not the best laid out webpage but you get the idea.
After lunch Susan dealt with the washing. While i goofed off watching a pied currawong peck holes in our rubbish bag to extract the bread crusts from toasted sandwiches we had for lunch and shuffling the solar panel between the shadows.
Towards twilight we did a short walk to a lookout and around the edge of the dry swamp. On our return the rubbish bag had been further shredded and our remaining bread in a bag in a open container tucked on the tail gate had been scattered on the ground. Culprits unknown but probably the currawongs as i think they have more brains than the kangaroos.
Susan knocked out another delicious pasta tea and i filled the customary dishwasher role.
After tea we adjourned for a fireside chat about snakes and treating snake bites.
There is a lot to do here walk wise and activity wise and i think a week would be necessary to really do it justice. Unfortunately time is closing in on us plus it is still pretty warm in the middle of the day which precludes the longer walks. Tomorrow we hope to start early and do a 12km circuit bushwalk.
I'll publish the lava tube pictures and videos hopefully tomorrow as an extra because it's bedtime here.
Cheers Simon
No comments:
Post a Comment