In the morning I had a genuine Undara Experience bush breakfast. Everyone from backpackers to pensioners joined in to cook their own toast over the open fire, sample some genuine billycan coffee, partake of bacon, eggs, and beans prepared fresh on the grill. Watch out for the Kookaburras; they’ll snatch your food if you’re not careful. From there I headed to the highlight of Undara - the lava tubes.
Roughly 190,000 years ago, the Undara volcano erupted spewing enough lava to fill Sydney harbour three times. The lava covered over 1500 square km and lava tubes formed in many of the riverbeds. To find them you look for rainforest growing in the Outback. It sounds crazy, but wherever the tubes collapsed you’ll find living rainforests.
It’s in these craters you’ll find openings into the lava tubes, and some of them are 20 meters across! Bram reckons he was the first person to ever set foot into some of the 190,000 year-old tubes. You mustcheck out Undara.
My last ride with Skysafari brought me from Undara to Mission Beach. With the flat Outback rushing by we flew over Undara volcano and made a 360° pass around the crater, and that was only the beginning. Stumbling upon a huge waterfall we whipped around, took some photos, and then came the best ride of my life. Brad the Pilot took us down into the gorge and we darted left and right following the river below. I couldn’t believe it was real — it felt like I was watching a movie.
Landing near Mission Beach, we enjoyed the beautiful view of Dunk Island before heading to lunch and bidding farewell to Brad and his yellow chopper. Skysafari will always be one of my best memories of Tropical North Queensland.
There are lots of ways to get from Mission Beach to Dunk Island, but if you really want to turn some heads, check out Calypso Dive’s new amphibious watercraft. The three-wheeled vehicle waited for me on the beach and drove right into the sea. Soon the wheels folded up and we were on outboard power, cruising at 30 knots. On the island side we drove straight out of the water and I felt like a movie star with all the cameras pointed my way. But I think they just wanted pics of the boat.
I checked in at Voyages Dunk Island Resort and headed straight to the jet skis. Now this is a cool and easy way to tour around the island. Our guide let me fool around and have plenty of fun with the ski. Here and there he stopped to tell us a little about the island. He related some interesting stories about buried treasure, elephants and movie stars, and was very entertaining. In fact, later I took a sunset kayak tour and headed over to the cave with the supposed buried treasure… but you’ll just have to see for yourself.
Day 7 - white-water rafting & beers >
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