Kalkajaka National Park Queensland | |
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Nearest town or city | Cooktown |
Coordinates | 15°40′05″S145°13′55″E / 15.66806°S 145.23194°E Coordinates: 15°40′05″S145°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 | Kalkajaka National Park |
See also | Protected areas of Queensland |
Kalkajaka National Park is a 781-hectare (1,930-acre) protected area in Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia. [1] [2]
The park is 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. [3] 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. [3] The Mulligan Highway marks the western border of the park.
The national park’s distinctive hard black boulders (often termed granite) and range are composed of the igneous felsic intrusive Trevethan Granodiorite which is predominantly a white to grey, medium-grained, porphyritic biotite monzogranite to granodiorite. The age of the intrusive is Late Permian and has been dated from 259.1 to 251.902 million years old. The Trevethan Granodiorite was originally magma that slowly solidified under the earths crust. [4] [5]
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. [5]
Kalkajaka ("Black Mountain") is a heavily significant feature of the Kuku Nyungkal people's cultural landscape. Kalkajaka translates to "place of the spear".
Queensland's Department of Environment and Natural Resources has been advised of at least four sites of particular mythological significance within the area as follows: [5]
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.
Kalkajaka also features strongly in local, more non-Aboriginal cultural landscapes, some of which has also been described by Queensland's Department of Environment and Resource Management as follows: [5]
When European colonists arrived late last century, they added to the many Aboriginal legends of the area with a few of their own. Stories abound of people, horses and whole mobs of cattle disappearing into the labyrinth of rocks, never to be seen again
It is believed that those who vanished most probably fell into one of the chasms under the rocks or after entering one of these places became lost. It is estimated only three in ten would survive such falls, wandering below the Earth's surface with only ground water streams and insects to nourish them. A minority group is referred to by colonists as the Outback Moles (perhaps in reference to New York's underground population). [3]
The park's mountains are located at the northernmost end of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, where world heritage listed wet tropical forests meet drier savanna woodlands - making it a natural refuge for once more widespread, now isolated relict fauna.
Queensland's Department of Environment and Resource Management advises, for instance, the relatively small, unusual "Black Mountain" environment is the world's only habitat for at least three animals: the Black Mountain boulderfrog or rock haunting frog ( Cophixalus saxatilis ); the Black Mountain skink ( Carlia scirtetis ); and the Black Mountain gecko ( Nactus galgajuga ). This makes the area one of Australia's most restricted habitats for endemic fauna. [5]
Camping is not permitted in the park. There are no walking tracks and no facilities for picnics. [6] There is a viewing platform that features interpretive displays. [3]
Granite ( or is a coarse-grained intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies underground. It is common in the continental crust of Earth, where it is found in igneous intrusions. These range in size from dikes only a few centimeters across to batholiths exposed over hundreds of square kilometers.
Intrusive rock is formed when magma penetrates existing rock, crystallizes, and solidifies underground to form intrusions, such as batholiths, dikes, sills, laccoliths, and volcanic necks.
The You Yangs are a series of granite ridges that rise up to 319 m (1,047 ft) above the flat and low-lying Werribee Plain in southern Victoria, Australia, approximately 5 km (3.1 mi) due west of the rural town of Little River, 55 km (34 mi) southwest of Melbourne CBD and 22 km (14 mi) north of Geelong. The main ridge runs roughly north-south for about 9 km (5.6 mi), with a lower extension running for about 15 km (9.3 mi) to the west. Much of the southern parts of the ranges are protected by the You Yangs Regional Park.
The Daintree Rainforest is a region on the northeast coast of Queensland, Australia, north of Mossman and Cairns. At around 1,200 square kilometres (460 sq mi), the Daintree is a part of the largest continuous area of tropical rainforest on the Australian continent. The Daintree Rainforest is a part of the Wet Tropics of Queensland Rainforest, that spans across the Cairns Region. The Wet Tropics Rainforest is the oldest continually surviving tropical rainforest in the world. Along the coastline north of the Daintree River, tropical forest grows right down to the edge of the sea.
Ringing rocks, also known as sonorous rocks or lithophonic rocks, are rocks that resonate like a bell when struck, such as the Musical Stones of Skiddaw in the English Lake District; the stones in Ringing Rocks Park, in Upper Black Eddy, Bucks County, Pennsylvania; the Ringing Rocks of Kiandra, New South Wales; and the Bell Rock Range of Western Australia. Ringing rocks are used in idiophonic musical instruments called lithophones.
Granodiorite is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock similar to granite, but containing more plagioclase feldspar than orthoclase feldspar.
The Stawamus Chief, officially Stawamus Chief Mountain, is a granitic dome located adjacent to the town of Squamish, British Columbia, Canada. It towers over 700 m (2,297 ft) above the waters of nearby Howe Sound. It is one of the largest granite monoliths in the world.
Wujal Wujal is a rural town and locality in the Wujal Wujal Aboriginal Shire, Queensland, Australia. In the 2016 census, Wujal Wujal had a population of 282 people. It is an Aboriginal community.
The Palmer River is a river located in Far North Queensland, Australia. The area surrounding the river was the site of a gold rush in the late 19th century which started in 1873.
The Barberton Greenstone Belt is situated on the eastern edge of Kaapvaal Craton in South Africa. It is known for its gold mineralisation and for its komatiites, an unusual type of ultramafic volcanic rock named after the Komati River that flows through the belt. Some of the oldest exposed rocks on Earth are located in the Barberton Greenstone Belt of the Eswatini–Barberton areas and these contain some of the oldest traces of life on Earth. Only the rocks found in the Isua Greenstone Belt of Western Greenland are older. The Makhonjwa Mountains make up 40% of the belt.
The Sierra Nevada Batholith is a large batholith which forms the core of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California, exposed at the surface as granite.
The Spanish Peaks are a pair of prominent mountains located in southwestern Huerfano County, Colorado. The Comanche people call them Huajatolla meaning "double mountain".
The Black Mountain boulder frog, also known as the rock haunting frog or the Black Mountain rainforest frog, is a species of frog in the family Microhylidae.
The Bloomfield River is a river located in the Wet Tropics of Far North Queensland, Australia, noted for its Bloomfield River cod fish species, found only in the river.
The Kuku Nyungkal people are a group of Aboriginal Australians who are the original custodians of the coastal mountain slopes, wet tropical forests, waters, and waterfalls of the Upper Annan River, south of Cooktown, Queensland
The Annan River is a river located in the Wet Tropics of Far North Queensland, Australia.
The Cathedral Peak Granodiorite (CPG) was named after its type locality, Cathedral Peak in Yosemite National Park, California. The granodiorite forms part of the Tuolumne Intrusive Suite, one of the four major intrusive suites within the Sierra Nevada. It has been assigned radiometric ages between 88 and 87 million years and therefore reached its cooling stage in the Coniacian.
Igneous rock, or magmatic rock, is one of the three main rock types, the others being sedimentary and metamorphic. Igneous rock is formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava.
El Capitan Granite is a type of granite, in a large area near El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park, California, United States. The granite forms part of the Tuolumne Intrusive Suite, one of the four major intrusive suites within the Sierra Nevada.
Kuna Crest Granodiorite, is found, in Yosemite National Park, United States. The granodiorite forms part of the Tuolumne Intrusive Suite, one of the four major intrusive suites within the Sierra Nevada. Of the Tuolumne Intrusive Suite, it is the oldest and darkest rock.