Day: 034
Date: Tuesday, 04 August 2020
Start: Ravenshoe
Finish: Undara Volcanic National Park
Daily Kilometres: 145 (click for Julie's Strava and photos)
Total Kilometres: 3664
Weather: Cold early then warm and sunny
Accommodation: Tent (glamping)
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Egg & bacon roll
Lunch: Ham salad sandwich/Roast beef, salad & chutney sandwich
Dinner: Chicken schnitzel, salad & chips, ice-cream
Aches: Nothing significant
Highlight: Although it was very cold, riding down the mountain from Ravenshoe in the pre-dawn light directly towards the large full moon setting in the west was a spectacular start to our day.
Lowlight: Julie got a puncture in our (almost) puncture-proof tyres in the late morning. A solid piece of wire had somehow threaded its way in through the tread and out through the sidewall. We swapped the tube for a new one and will repair the damaged one at some point.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
It was damp, misty and dark as we exited Ravenshoe about 6:20am and found our way back onto Highway 1, the Savannah Way, which began descending from the mountains. A setting moon (see above) in a misty sky was directly ahead.
Further down the mountain, it got very cold, compounded by the wind created by the speed of our descent. I was cold, with frozen hands and feet, so I knew Julie, who always feels the cold, would really be suffering. We just silently hunkered down, willing the sun, which was rising slowly behind us, to generate some warmth and thaw us out.
Eventually it did, though we were still both wearing our jackets at 8:45am when we reached Mount Garnet, where we stopped at a roadhouse for breakfast after 45 kilometres. This would be the last store we would see for a couple of days, apart from the slim pickings expected at Undara where we were booked to stay for the next two nights, so we stocked up on essentials, such as bags of chips and two-litre bottles of Coke, so we didn't have to pay extortionate prices (we'll just have to live with the cost of the meals).
By the time we left Mount Garnet, we were feeling warm enough to ride in our T-shirts, and we spent the rest of the morning riding along the quiet highway, bordered by scrubby timbered grazing country with cattle rarely seen. The road was undulating, with plenty of enervating ascents, but there were also long gradual descents and flattish sections that gave us time to recover.
In the late morning, Julie had a rear tyre puncture (see above) that cost us 30 minutes or so, and then further on we took a lunch break at a pretty rest stop in the Forty Mile Scrub National Park, through which we had been riding for the last hour or so. Four kilometres after lunch, we reached a junction where our road turned directly west, and the traffic became even lighter. There were long stretches where we had the road to ourselves. The grades were easy, and together with a slight following wind, we made good time in the warm afternoon sunshine to the turn-off to Undara Volcanic National Park, and the park resort where we had booked accommodation. From the turn-off it was still another 14 kilometres to the resort itself, Undara Experience, including a last few hills, and we arrived at 3:45pm.
We checked into our small tent/cabin in the resort where there are a range of accommodation options, at a range of prices. It's a bit of a captive market once you are here, and you must pay for a guided tour to the lava tubes, which are the main attraction, but I'm OK with that if it prevents vandalism and overuse. After showers, we adjourned to the excellent al fresco lodge area where we later ate dinner, during which I fended off two kookaburra swoop attacks on our meals. A few of the birds were perched in the rafters of the high shelter over the eating area spying out their opportunities. Each time, at the last second I spotted the diving attacker and held my arms up, triggering a last nanosecond change of direction by the crafty kookaburra. You have to admire those birds.
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