Warrumbungle Range
| Warrumbungle Range | |
|---|---|
 Breadknife, an exposed gangue rock almost 100 meters high in the Warrumbungle Range |
|
| location | New South Wales |
| Coordinates | 31 ° 12 ′ S , 148 ° 54 ′ E |
| rock | Volcanic origin |
The Warrumbungle Range , also known as Warrumbungles or Warrumbungle-Liverpool Basalt Ranges , is a mountainous country in northern New South Wales , Australia. It extends for 130 km in a north-westerly direction and is of volcanic origin. The name Warrumbungle comes from the Aborigines and means "crooked mountains".
location
The closest place is Coonabarabran . It can be reached via the Newell Highway , which connects Melbourne with Brisbane .
history
Thousands of years before European colonization, three Aboriginal tribes came to this area, the Kamilaroi , Wiradjuri and Weilan , who differed in their languages. Evidence of their presence in the Warrumbungles is the fragments of stone they left behind when they made their stone axes .
The first European to penetrate the area in 1818 was the explorer John Oxley on his second inland expedition. He named the hill country Arbuthnots Range ; however, the name did not survive and the original Aboriginal name prevailed. European settlers came soon after Oxley, but they only cleared the valleys and the low slopes and used them as pastureland. Old fences, some ruins and foundations of buildings and huts in Warrumbungle National Park testify to this .
geology
The subsurface of the volcanoes was formed 180 million years ago when there was a lake and sediments were deposited that were solidified into sandstone by diagenesis . This sandstone is called Pilliga sandstone .
The mountainous country consists essentially of heavily eroded shield volcanoes that were active 18 to 15 million years ago and formed on the sandstone. The shield volcanoes were created by numerous volcanic eruptions over long periods of time.
Mountain world
In Warrumbungle area there are numerous mountains like Belougery Spire , Belougery Split Rock , Crater Bluff , Bluff Mountain , Bread Knife ( bread knife ) and Mount Exmouth . Breadknife is a volcanic gangue rock , an almost vertical free-standing rock wall with a height of almost 100 m, which is very rare.
A network of hiking trails leads through the mountain area. The mountain area has been visited by hikers and mountaineers since the 1930s.
Individual evidence
- ↑ environment.nsw.gov.au : Warrumbungle National Park , in English, accessed December 12, 2011
- ↑ environment.nsw.gov.au : Warrumbungle National Park: Landscape and Geology , in English, accessed December 12, 2011