ANZAC Day Long Weekend - Camping at Undara

On the ANZAC Day long weekend this year (25th- 27th April), we went out camping at Undara. There was no 4wding (as you can probably tell by the Mazda and Kia that came with us!), but we did take the Pathfinder (all our stuff wouldn't fit in the little car!), and the camping was lovely. We went with Jess' parents and Karina and Graham - friends through work.

Undara is about 3.5hrs south-west of Cairns. We left by 8 on ANZAC morning to hopefully beat the crowds. First stop was at the servo at the bottom of the Gillies Range to fuel up and meet our camping buddies. We left there just after 8:30 after topping up fuel tanks and iceboxes. The Gillies range is quite famous amongst motorcyclists at least, due to it's tight, winding corners as it climbs up the side of the range. Guard rails are completely unknown up here, and you really don't want to go over the edge!

The Gillies, however, is also well known for sometimes being a very slow trip. Lake Tinaroo is situated just at the top of the range, and is very popular with caravans, camper trailers, and mostly, ski boats. So it's not uncommon to find yourself crawling up the mountain behind a string of cars, all headed by a 1950's era slide-on camper towing a 1960's runabout. Thankfully we had a really good run up, and were off on our way very smartly. I've mentioned about the Gillies here, as it comes in again at the end...

We stopped briefly at Innot Hot Springs - about 45 mins before Undara. Innot Hot Springs consists of a little town, and caravan park, and a creek. As you can probably guess, the creek is home to the hot springs. We walked down until we came to some - the clearer the water, the hotter it is! There were some puddles that you were unable to stick your hand in for any length of time, such was the temperature of the water straight out of the ground. Amazing stuff, and we're penciled it in as a future spot to check out over a weekend, despite the sometimes overpowering sulphur odour!

We arrived at Undara around lunch time, and promptly checked in and headed off to our assigned sites. Upon arriving, we discovered that the sites that we had been assigned (the ones we had specifically requested!) were really not that flash. No shade, rock ground, and heaps of ants. Additionally, there were a pair of rude german tourists camped there still, despite checkout being 3 hours earlier! When we asked if they were leaving soon, they simply answered "no", and went back to reading their books! However a quick trip back to the office soon had us relocated to much, MUCH nicer spots! We set up, happy in the knowledge that we had had the last laugh!



The new awning worked a treat. It would have been even better if we had put some thought into where to park the car so that we could get the most shade out of it, but hey - now we know for next time.



It wasn't long before some locals joined us.









The remainder of the day was spent lounging around, and generally enjoying being in the great outdoors.



Saturday morning we had organised to go on a tour of the lava tubes. As it turns out, there was a Camp Quality event at the campground that weekend, so we ended up needing two of the minibuses to take us all into the national park!

The change in scenery was quite dramatic. From rocky, open grasslands:



Into tight, cool rainforest as you descend down into the collapsed sections of tube:



It wasn't long before we came to the first section of tube, known as The Arch (for obvious reasons):



The patterns and the colours in the rock are quite amazing. The guide explained to us that, despite the roof and walls being covered in deep cracks, it was actually these cracks that keep the tubes intact, in the same way that a stone archway is held together by interlocking blocks:





Some of the spots made you think you had stepped out into a whole new world:



We even met some of the locals up close (a bit too close for Jess' liking!!!):





We eventually made our way to the larger of the two tubes we were going to visit. This one is known as Stephenson's. Due to the larger than average rainfall we have had so far this year, there was actually water pooling in the bottom of the tube. Apparently this only happens roughly once in every 20 years, so we felt quite lucky to be here at such a time.



The adventurous ones in the group were invited to take off shoes and socks and roll up jeans, and follow down into the tube itself. The water ended up being half way to knee height at the deepest sections, and completely clear.







Unfortunately, it was soon time to climb back out and up to the surface. We felt very privileged to be able to experience such a thing - it certainly felt very strange to be underground, in a huge rock cavern carved out of the earth by molten lava, standing in cool, clear water. By now, however, it was midday, and the temperature back on the savannah was considerably warmer than down in the rainforest and tubes!



That afternoon the girls decided to try out the brand new camp oven, and whip up some damper. Having never made damper before, nor used a camp oven, it was always going to be a bit hit and miss. However, I can happily report that they nailed it first go!



Is there anything better in the world than sitting around a fire out in the bush, surrounded by birds and inquisitive hoppers, piece of freshly cooked and buttered damper in one hand, and a cold beer in the other, watching the sun set?



Following the success of the damper, the girls decided to try their hand at a camp oven roast. Due to the smaller size of the oven and the 6 of us, the meat and onions went into the oven, whilst the veggies were wrapped up in individual foil packages, and thrown into the coals to cook separately.

A little too much enthusiastic fire-building around the sides of the camp oven saw the onions meet an untimely demise, but the meat came out absolutely perfect!



A glass or two of red wine, some roast beef with veggies whilst sitting around a camp fire - what a way to end the day!



Sunday morning we woke up and set to packing up early to hit the road back. A bit of a waste of a day, but we wanted to avoid all those ski boats that would be heading home down the Gillies when we got there if we had left any later.

So, why all the emphasis at the start about the fun that is the Gillies range? Well, we'd been seeing increasingly poor fuel economy out of the pathfinder over the preceding weeks. In round town driving, we were getting perilously close to 20L/100kms - a $90 tank of fuel would last a week and about 300kms. With the car loaded to the hilt with our junk, the awning and poles on the roofrack, the trip up the Gillies and through the windy, rainforrest Tableland roads, we ended up averaging 11.7L/100kms for the trip out there and back. Around 560kms on 66L of fuel. So I'm pretty happy with that now. Especially considering that when we drove our little baby Subaru from Bris to Cairns, with a very light load and nothing external to the car, we were getting about 10L/100kms on the highway. Given the driving that we did (I wasn't exactly slow up the Gillies) and the load that we had on, I'm really happy with that result. At the same time though, I'm still keeping an eye on those FWH's on 4x4parts... :lol:

Anyway, that was our lovely weekend away. It's just reinforced our resolve to get out more often over winter this year - there's so many interesting places that are well within half a day's drive, yet so far removed from the city. Now that we're reasonably well set up on the camping front, I'm keen to start finding some more out of the way places where we can be by ourselves, instead of needing to ask others to turn their music down, and move out of our camp sites, and so on!

I can heartily recommend spending a few days at Undara if any of you are ever up this way - it really is a wonderful place. The facalities are very good, and the staff are all friendly, helpful and lovely. We'll defiantly be going back at some stage to explore some of the longer bush walks, but we've got a few places on our list to knock over before then!

I'll leave you all with some piccies of some of the other locals to share breakfast with us.
More photos can be found in our Picasa album, here: Picasa Album - Camping at Undara

Thanks!
Matto :)

Butcher Bird:


Kookaburras:





Rainbow Lorikeets: