Black Mountain (Kalkajaka) National Park
|
Black Mountain (Kalkajaka) National Park Queensland |
|
|---|---|
|
IUCN category II (national park)
|
|
View of one of the black mountains from Mulligan Highway
|
|
 Black Mountain (Kalkajaka)
National Park |
|
| Nearest town or city | Cooktown |
| Coordinates | 15°40′05″S 145°13′55″E / 15.66806°S 145.23194°ECoordinates: 15°40′05″S 145°13′55″E / 15.66806°S 145.23194°E |
| Established | 1980 (Register of the National Estate) |
| Area | 7.81 km2 (3.0 sq mi) |
| Managing authorities | Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service |
| Website | Black Mountain (Kalkajaka)<br |
| See also | Protected areas of Queensland |
Black Mountain (Kalkajaka) National Park is a 781 hectare protected area in Queensland, (Australia), 25 km south west of Cooktown. It is managed and protected as a national park under the Nature Conservation Act 1992.
The main feature of the park is the mass of granite boulders, some the size of houses. The absence of soil between the boulders and rocks create a maze of gaps and passages, which can be used to penetrate inside the mountain. These rocks can become extremely hot.
The area has a bad reputation as numerous people and those searching for the missing have disappeared without trace giving Black Mountain the nickname ‘mountain of death’. The Mulligan Highway marks the western border of the park.
The national park's distinctive hard granite boulders and range originally formed out of magma that first slowly solidified under the Earth's crust about 250 million years ago.
The softer land surfaces above the solidified magma eroded away over time, leaving the magma's fractured top to be exposed as a mountain of grey granite boulders blackened by a film of microscopic blue-green algae growing on the exposed surfaces. Colder rains falling on the dark, heated granite boulders causes the boulders to progressively fracture, break, and slowly disintegrate, sometimes explosively.
The National Park's "Black Mountains" are a heavily significant feature of the Kuku Nyungkal people's cultural landscape known locally to Aboriginal Australians as Kalkajaka (trans: "place of spear").
Queensland's Department of Environment and Natural Resources has been advised of at least four sites of particular mythological significance within the "Black Mountains" as follows:
There are at least four sites of religious or mythological significance on the mountain. These are the Kambi, a large rock with a cave where flying-foxes are found; Julbanu, a big grey kangaroo-shaped rock looking toward Cooktown; Birmba, a stone facing toward Helenvale where sulphur-crested cockatoos are seen; and a taboo place called Yirrmbal near the foot of the range.
...
Wikipedia