There were bats?

Barbara and I walked to the top of the extinct Kalkarni Crater this morning and walked round the rim. Aerial photos best show this crater and its classic bowl shape. I huffed and puffed my way to the top and once there, the walk around the rim was much easier. You could see for miles across the savannah and open eucalypt woodlands which are characteristic of this region. 

The Undara volcano, being a shield volcano, looks like a large hill and it's lava flows in ancient river beds are believed to have caused the lava tubes. The climb into and out of sections of the tube was a scramble over odd sized basalt rocks with ropes to assist balance - I took them very slowly and very carefully.

One long section of tube we entered branched into a pitch black tunnel where torches came in very handy. Walking on the tunnel floor is usually much easier than the approach due to silt deposits on the floor rather than uneven rocks. As we neared the end of the tunnel, you could hear the resident microbats and see them by torch light as they bunched together on the ceiling. 

That was the end of the tour for me, however Barbara elected to do the full day tour to other lava tubes which she will describe in a separate post. The guide told me that we did the hardest sections in the morning and that the remaining tubes were much easier with boardwalks in place. It will be interesting to hear Barbara's thoughts when she returns.

If you ever head up this way, you can drive in and walk up the Kalkarni Crater without a guide, however, you can only go into the lava tubes with guides from Undara or from Bedrock Caravan Park at Mt Surprise (our caravan park).

View from the crater rim looking over the caldera to the other side:

The approach down into the Wind Tunnel lava tube:

The people in the photo give you a sense of the size of this shorter and well lit section of the tube:

Boar's head skeleton:

Looking back to the tube entrance and rocky path in:

A further section was much longer and very dark at its heart. Barbara and I are pictured in the tunnel - the guide took this photo and his headlamp interfered with the exposure:

The red colour in the walls and domed ceiling is the iron leaching out: