Today Sue and I visited this:
It’s a burning coal seam about 2.5 hours northwest of Newcastle. I’d learned of it via an ancient episode of Ask The Leyland Brothers and new I had to visit one day. Despite very high temperatures (upper 30s) today was the day!
The area of interest itself is over an hours walk from the (somewhat uninviting) carpark, and the walk is about 25% like the above image, but mostly like this:
It was hot and humid, but the path was mostly uphill and the higher we got the stronger the breezes. We didn’t see any mammals but there were a few birds, lizards and about five billion of these guys:
He looks bigger in that photo than he was, which was about an inch long. Sue was mindful of snakes, but if they were around they were hiding in the shade 🙂
Eventually we reached the top, which looked like this:
The smell of sulphur was strong, but we didn’t see much steam coming out of the ground. The signs said that 30 meters underground the temperature was 1700C, but if it was notably warmer at the summit it wasn’t easy to tell due to how hot it was anyway.
Ducking around the fence into the sulfurous ground made us a bit uncomfortable. There was something unusual about the place, and we quickly shuffled away.
Of course it took us another hour or so to walk back to the car. It was getting even warmer now, and the car air conditioning was welcome indeed.
On the drive back we stopped at two lakes. The first, Lake Glenbawn was ringed by a very locked fence and this sign hung on the gate:
The next, Lake Lidell had an incredibly creepy caravan park full of ancient, mostly locked up caravans that look like they’d been there since the 1970s. We drove around, disturbed by the creepiness of the place, and I doubt you could have paid us to exit the car!
There’s a story waiting to be told about that place!
Anyway Burning Mountain was fun and it was a good day trip ‘out west’. If you’re ever here, it’s worth the trip. On a cooler day 🙂
