Undara Volcano

Just a five-hour drive from beautiful Cairns is the Undara Volcanic National Park, where the history and beauty of Australian nature and culture grows as deep as the trees.

190,000 years ago, the Undara Volcano erupted, spreading lava over 90km of forestry and land, but through the years the lava tubes have solidified and created small caves and passageways for people to explore. The tubes broke the world record for the largest continuous lava tubes, but, more importantly, created habitats for Northern Australian wildlife to live and breed. With plenty of caves home to some of Mother Nature’s finest animals such as bats, owls, snakes and insects, the most famous cave remains as the Bayliss Cave. What makes the Bayliss Cave so special is that it houses at least 52 species of animals making it one of the world’s most important and biologically diverse caves. Living in the Bayliss Cave are up to 80,000 bats ranging from the Eastern Cave Bat to the Northern Horseshoe Bat, making Bayliss Cave home to one of the largest colonies of bats in Northern Queensland.

The landscape around the tubes promises to be mind-blowingly beautiful with craters, lava ponds and perennial springs from the eruption all those years ago. Housed around the enchanting natural beauty are rare plants and ancient trees, with more wildlife living there such as snakes, birds of prey and other species of birds including the Pied Butcherbird and the Red-Winged Parrot.
Other than the pictorial landscape of this national park, it also has an insight into Australia’s Ewamian Aboriginal people, who, before the Europeans arrived, would hunt and live within these trees. Stone artifacts and scarred tresses can be found among the vine thickets in the tubes.