Rick and Rae's Travels: Tues, 30th August

It was already 25 degrees by 8am ... we expected a hot one again. We were travelling on another developmental road, meaning some stretches were single lane.

We stopped for a short time 50kms later, just 20kms west of a small town called Georgetown. We had a closer look at the Cumberland Chimney which is all that remains of a gold crushing plant built by cornish masons. Nearby was a dam covered with beautiful, white water lillies and birds everywhere.

We continued into Georgetown and went into the Visitors' Centre. Also housed in the same building is the Ted Elliott Mineral Collection called TerrEstrial. This is an exhibit of over 4,500 minerals, gemstones and fossils from local mines and other countries. Ted Elliott began gathering minerals as a teenager in 1946 and this display is his work over a period of 50 years. One of the stars of the display is the largest cut and polished agate in Australia and perhaps the world. It measures 50cm x 30cm x 10cm and was found by Ken Collins in 1950 at Agate Creek south of Georgetown. Ted Elliott acquired the agate in 1976.

After spending quite a bit of time in the Ted Elliot display we continued to Mount Surprise and had lunch in the local park as it had turned out to be a pleasant 27 degrees. Mt Surprise is a railway town on the old Cairns to Forsayth Railway line. It is a centre for gem fossicking with topaz, quartz, spinel, garnet, cairngorm and aquamarine to be found. We wandered across the road from the park and had a look at a shop called the Gem Den. I didn't find anything in the way of jewellery that I couldn't live without and Rick didn't find anything that he could live with!

We continued on for about 55kms to the Undara Volcanic National Park. Approx. 190,000 years ago a major volcanic eruption produced 23 cubic kilometres of lava, most of which flowed down the western side of the Great Divide. This created what is known as the Undara Lava Tubes. The tubes distributed lava over 100km from the crater, the longest flow in the world from a single volcano. Unfortunately, there wasn't another tour of the tubes until 3:30pm which would have been too late for us, so we had to keep moving.

We stopped 150kms further down the road at Ravenshoe. Here we were in a totally different environment to what we were used to. We were now is lush, green, rainforest and it was cool and overcast with spits of rain. We were going to spend the night in the free camping area at the rear of the Railway Museum which happened to be in the main street. Many more campers pulled in for the night and we had a good night's sleep in the cooler weather conditions.