Isabel's Adventures: Friday 19th June

Friday 19^th June

On Friday we went to Undara Lava Tubes. At the lava tubes we went on the archway tour. On the archway tour we went in several lava tubes and lava tubes collapses. (Lava tubes collapses are where there used to be a lava tube but it collapsed acquiring plants to grow where it was.) I learnt that when black spear grass seeds get moisture they do the spear grass twirl.

This is a micro bat.

This is me with a lava tube.

This is me with a lava tube collapse.

(The spear grass twirl is when the spear grass seed twirls a bit.) I also learnt that the rocks that make the lava tubes are depending on each other to keep each other up.

Mum's note:
The caravan park at Mt. Surprise is combined with a hobby farm with miniature ponies, bird aviaries, chickens, geese and an emu.

Karate kid.... a Rose-Ringed Parakeet with attitude.

One of the many miniature ponies.

The Lava Tubes were fascinating. We learned how the lava from the Undara volcano had followed the creek bed, widening and deepening it through a process called thermal erosion.

Looking from one tube collapse through a very short lava tube into the next collapsed section.

In some places the tube disappears because it goes straight down, following the creek over a waterfall. In other sections it is blocked off due to rock slump - where the cooling lava has slumped down off the wall and blocked up the tube.

The end of the tunnel where the lava has dropped away over a waterfall.

We also learned that the track on the property used to be the "highway" to the coast. Because it is just a dirt track it was marked by blazed trees, many of which are still visible.

A blazed tree marking the "road".

The micro-bats in the lava tubes are Horseshoe bats, and are noticeably different to the Bentwing bats we have seen elsewhere in that they were hanging from the roof by just their hind legs. The bats we saw in the lava tubes are entering torpor for the winter, and were seemingly oblivious to the tourists. We also saw an Australian brushturkey.

After we returned to Mt. Surprise we went gem "fossicking". Due to time constraints we don't have time to visit the gemfields nearby, so we bought some buckets of topaz wash (stones from a gem mine) and used the proprietor's tools to sieve the stones. Caleb found a beauty in his bucket - apparently if his rough topaz was facetted it would be about 4 carat, measure about 8x10mm and be about $200 worth. Nice find in an $8 bucket!