Zenitude: A trip to Queensland Outback – Driving along the Savannah Way

For a change we left the salty life behind and took a short trip to experience a little of the Australian outback.

Undara Volcanic National Park – Touring the lava tubes

We arrived at Undara Experience installations just in time for lunch. We were nicely surprised by the beautiful surroundings and the great service offered by the staff. We had taken one of the packages including lunch, dinner, a night at a swag tent, the bush breakfast and 3 tours. It was a busy time which we immensely enjoyed. Check for the offerings at: www.undara.com.au - highly recommended.

The restaurant

Setting for bush breakfast

Champagne Sunset

Beautiful sunset in the bush

The restored train carriages

Having dinner at the train carriage restaurant

Lots of wild life around

The swag tents

Touring the lava tubes

Chillagoe – Mungana Caves National Park

After Undara we wanted to get to Chillagoe and the challenge was to find out the best way of getting there. If you travel directly from Cairns there is no problems, just 15 km of dirt road on the 200 km trip, but going from Undara meant taking a 120 km dirt road out of Mount Pleasant.

Oscar has a good driving record on dirt roads from our time exploring the Argentinian country so after checking the road condition with the locals we set onto the estimated 4 hours trip. Oscar did enjoy the experience. The drive was not too bad even though I wasn't quite happy in some narrow places, luckily being the dry season all creeks were dry. I can imagine you need a 4 WD for this road on the wet season. There is also no phone coverage and we discovered people carry VHF radios when transiting these areas. We didn't met with anybody going in the same direction but we did met 4 or 5 vehicles going the other way. I was relieved when we finally arrived in Chillagoe.

We got accommodation at the historic Chillagoe Postoffice building that has been converted into a charming guesthouse (www.chillagoeguesthouse.com.au/). As we were the only guests we had the house all to ourselves which was fantastic. The Pub across the street is one of the few places where to dine. Here we also took a package for all the tours which we split in 2 days to visit all 3 of the main caves. Quite interesting as each cave has its own characteristics.