Lots of money going out..... Luckily the caravan park owner is also a mechanic so he's ordering the tyres for us but they won't get here till tomorrow night, he'll fit them first thing the next day so we can be on our way. A day was wasted with staff not passing on messages to us or to him (we haven't met him, but have spoken to his wife) but it's all sorted now.
We were lucky Mt Surprise has someone to do this sort of work because it has a population of 65, not exactly a metropolis. Our bus driver/tour guide yesterday, Steve, a former surveyor who loves the bush, said he lives in nearby Einasleigh, which has 20 people, if they're all at home, and he was out, so the population was 19.
We've had a busy couple of days. yesterday we did a tour to the Undarra Lava Tubes, which are awesome. Lots of exercise involved, starting with a 2.5 km walk around a crater rim, then up and down stairs and rocks in various tubes. The lava system spreads for 160 kms, the longest single lava event in the world. Not all of that is tubes, of course. Some of the former tubes have fallen in and created fertile hollows, others were filled with lava which solidified. But there are a number of hollow tubes, like giant caves, and probably more not yet discovered. One of the tubes has a small entrance, and brown snakes hang from trees to catch the bats as they emerge in the evening. Undarra Lodge runs a twilight tour to witness this delightful event. Not for us, thank you. Steve told us about this happening just as I was descending the stairs past the trees into the tube. "Where are they now?" I asked and he said the bats were still asleep. Not the bats, the snakes! No sign of them, luckily. We did see lots of bats, though, 3 different species, and at times had them flying above our heads. No worries.
We had a great time in terms of animals and birds while in the National Park- apparently there are 10 species of macropods (big-foot, that is kangaroos, wallabies etc.) and we saw six species, dozens of roos and wallabies, most of them in full flight- it's always great to see them bounding away, I always think they look like some sort of mechanical toy, their action is so unlike any other animal's.
As for birds, we had close-ups of many including wedge tailed eagles, a bustard, and a kookaburra chorus while we ate lunch- the kookaburras flew inside the high roof at Undarra Lodge and sat there watching us eat after they'd sung to us. The Canadian kids who were with us were delighted. Such a nice family, with polite, helpful boys. In one of the lava tubes my torch gave up the ghost just as I was about to walk down some stairs. I told the guide, who was walking behind me, but 15 year old Tyler immediately gave me his torch, which was very thoughtful of him, and this turned out to be typical of his and his little brother's behaviour. Nice boys. I felt sorry for them at lunchtime- they were given small helpings of chicken nuggets and chips, the type of thing you'd give a 5 year old. Since Tyler is a gangly teenager who towers over his parents, I thought he must have wished for more, but nary a complaint was heard. He did help himself to a big dessert, though, and who could blame him!
Today we've been fossicking, and found a couple of topaz stones. We came home with 5, but 2 of those were salted into our pan by the tour guide, so I don't count those. It was fun, though. This time there was a German family with us; although the parents had lived in Australia and spoke good English, and chatted with us, the kids didn't understand the language, so there wasn't a lot of interaction there, but they did say they'd had a good time.
Quiet day tomorrow, no tours planned but there's a pool here (did I mention that I'm wearing a sleeveless blouse, sitting outside under the awning in a pleasant breeze?) It does get cool at night, under 10 degrees, but warms up quite quickly once the sun rises. There's also a creek which is apparently worth a look, we haven't been there yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment