"Good enough for the Bush"

On Monday morning, I took off for a road trip with Erika and Bailey, my neighbors who are also American JCU students. We were headed for Undara, a remote spot in the bush of Australia (almost but not quite the Outback). We headed up the coast and stopped for lunch on the beach in the beautiful little town of Cardwell. We turned inland towards the Atherton Tablelands and stopped at Mamu, which has elevated walkways built so that you can walk through the rainforest canopy.




We arrived there at night and checked into our “lodge,” a three person room with a shared outdoor kitchen and access to the campsite bathrooms. The next morning we took a short hike up to a bluff and found an incredible view. I was awestruck by the remoteness of the vast empty land surrounding us. We then took a guided tour of the lava tubes that are Undara’s claim to fame.




After the tour we went for another little hike to lookout, and saw some wallabies. We had dinner at the restaurant that night since we were eager to try Emu, Crocodile, and Kangaroo meat (I haven’t been a strict vegetarian in Australia because the meat industry is so much better than in the US). They were all quite good but kangaroo was the tastiest and most tender.




That night we did a nightwalk and saw a number of kangaroos but little else in the way of cool nocturnal animals. Wednesday we did a 12 kilometer hike. It was so beautiful and we did not encounter a single other person on the trail. We were hot and thirsty when we got back so treated ourselves to ice cream and a dip in the swimming pool.


The “wilderness at sunset” tour took us through the park in a van looking for macropods (“long foot,” wallabies, kangaroos, and wallaroos) and we did see a lot of them. Then we watched the beautiful sunset and enjoyed some champagne, cheese and crackers. We also went to a lava tube cave that is home to tons of microbats and watched as hundreds of them flew around our heads. Snakes at the mouth of the tunnel were trying to catch the bats as they passed.




Thursday morning it was time to check out and we started the long drive home via the inland route this time on which we passed roadkill kangaroos every five minutes. We stopped to examine up close a huge termite mound.

We arrived home in the afternoon and got cleaned up. Bailey, Erika and I celebrated Thanksgiving that evening with a meal out at an Asian restaurant.