Undara Volcanoes National Park: catacombs where white cockroaches live and ancient darkness reigns (21 photos + 1 video)

This national park contains the remains of one of the longest lava flows on earth from a single volcano.





The caves within this lava tube system are fertile pockets that support a variety of tropical rainforest plant and animal species.



Australia, 1970s. Scientists carefully make their way with flashlights through tunnels whose walls remember ancient eruptions. They are looking for… a model of lunar craters. But instead of lifeless rocks, they discover an ecosystem teeming with life: blind frogs, giant silverfish, and armies of albino cockroaches that have never seen the sun.

The Birth of Lava Tubes





190,000 years ago, the Undara volcano awoke on the flat as a table Queensland plateau. Its lava (1,220°C) flowed over 1,550 km² - a record for a single eruption. The outer layers of lava cooled faster, forming a crust. The red-hot core continued to flow, forming voids - like chocolate icing with a liquid filling. The longest tunnel stretched for 100 kilometers.



Over the millennia, the tubes have become a kind of underground Eden, inhabited by amazing creatures. Among them are white cockroaches - blind, with antennae for life in the dark, endemic bats, snakes, frogs and more.



In some tubes, the CO₂ level is 200 times higher than normal. And therefore, only super-resilient species can survive here. Scientists believe that there may be creatures unknown to science lurking in the depths.



For a long time, the tubes were considered just a geological curiosity, until NASA researchers began studying them as an analogue of lunar tunnels. As a result, it turned out that once every 20 years, groundwater fills part of the tunnels, creating mirror galleries (the last time this happened was in 2019).



Today, daily excursions are conducted here. Tourists are given helmets and told chilling stories, such as about cave relatives of local cockroaches, allegedly found... in the mouths of Martian volcanoes according to telescope data.



These tubes are a kind of time machine. They preserve the breath of the ancient Earth - as it was seen by the first people who had not yet become afraid of fire.







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