Undara Lava Tubes, Australia

by chris cunningham

[UNDARA LAVA TUBES VIDEO LINK – 27sec. – 160×120 – 396k]

I ran out of time last year to go to these lava tubes, and I almost balked at it again this year, but we made it out there. 3 hour drive out, two hour tour, three hour drive back. Plus or minus a few hours somehow. So, like 200,000 years ago a volcano erupted, then lava flowed down a creek bed, the lava cooled, the tubes emptied out, parts of it collapsed, vegetation grew back, people inhabited Australia, brochures were printed up, a van picked us up, I shot this photo, and that’s the history of the lava tubes. The cicada’s were huge and so deafeningly loud they kind of made me dizzy after awhile. You could barely hear the guide talking. On the way home I asked the driver if we could stop and check out some of the termite mounds that were all over the place. We passed thousands and thousands of these things.