What a Surprise!!

Mount Surprise

Bedrock Village Tourist Park at Mt Surprise, was an absolute ‘gem’ of a find! (And all because the Undarra Lodge Camping Area was booked out when we arrived).  We were told, afterwards, that this worked out in our favour anyway.

Many travellers are beginning to be on the roads and we can’t take it for granted that we will automatically get a camp site somewhere when we pull in. Lawn Hill National Park was also booked out when we rang, so we’ve booked in nearby. Again, people assure us we have the better deal!!

Bedrock Village is a case of locals “making something out of nothing”. Joe and Jo had worked in the area for years and have great knowledge about the stations, the geology, native vegetation and animals of the area, and they started to see many, many caravans driving past their gateway. Consequently, they purchased land and slowly began to set up a caravan park, between Georgetown and Mount Garnet. This camp site may not be super green and appealing to the eye, but it is neat and tidy, and they provide great hospitality. A couple of nights they offer a shared meal, that you can book and pay a reasonable price to attend and then they have a guitar led ‘sing along’ around the campfire! Jed now wants to play the guitar!!

Campfire singalong! Joe leading the way with the "regulars", the QR Choir (Qld Rail gang that
patronise Bedrock Village), in fine voice in the background. The guy next to Joe was a fantastic
musician and borrowed the guitar for a couple of numbers.

A couple of years ago they built on a café, but have trouble staffing it. However last year, a pastry chef and his wife were travelling through and offered to run it for them during the travelling season. What a “Coupe”! Every morning they do cooked breakfasts, bread rolls and sweet pastries – vanilla slice, eclairs, jelly cakes, apple slice…. And they make real coffee!! (albeit sometimes with UHT milk!) Once, the morning rush is over they then begin to make pasties and pies you can purchase for lunch. People come from all over because they have heard of the Bedrock Café.

They also put their local knowledge to use and run tours to the volcanic craters in the area and the Undarra Lava Tubes, and tours involving the Savannahlander train and a local cattle station.

The Forrest family in a lava tube - with a great ceiling pattern behind, from the oxidising of various minerals.

We learnt a bit about geology on our tour with Joe to the Undarra Lava Tubes. These huge underground cavernous tubes were formed when the lava flows from the craters in the area flowed down a slope, with the outer layer solidifying as it cooled, while the flow within kept moving. There are evidently kilometres and kilometres of them. We were shown through 3 tubes , and walked around the rim of the Kilarni Crater. This volcano has left a conical mountain crater, surrounded by country that is scattered with varying sizes of black basalt boulders.



Basalt boulders strewn all over!

  

The "lava-tory" (an old joke, I fear!?)



Morning tea - cooked by the 'pastry-chef'!

Yep, it's a black rock! - another one. This area
is riddled with them.



Lava tube





This is what happens when you stay
 too long in a Lava Tube!! (the best
 kind of cane toad!)



Mount Surprise ...  a great place to stop!