Coonabarabran

Visitors to Warrumbungle National Park will find a really spectacular landscape, some wonderful campsites to stay at, a really excellent network of walking tracks and some of the most interesting geology you can find anywhere.

My name is Alexa Troedson and I'm a geologist and i was the lead geological author on the Warrumbungle National Park geo trail.

This is one of our best classrooms and it's probably one of the best classrooms I've ever taught in.

Not only do we have the amazing diversity in geology but we've got fantastic diversity of fauna and flora.

When kids get up here you can't wipe that smile off their faces.

So my name is Wes Leedham and I'm the principal of the Warrumbungle National Park environmental education centre.

The Warrumbungles is obviously a relatively new landscape and what it does offer is two distinct areas the east and the west coming together and it's providing a diversity of many things.

Obviously we've got a huge diversity here of our geology. That's also then led and produced a huge diversity of different soil types, which has led to great vegetation and great flora and an unbelievable landscape, much higher than the existing planes around which is also giving us greater precipitation and this is such an amazing location for kids to see all these processes and biophysical interactions, to get that greater understanding on a on a place like this to reinforce what they're learning in the classroom.

You can't you can't get better than that.

It's not only a physical challenge it's also a mental challenge, but you are rewarded when you get up here and the use of like the information that the geotrail app's provided it's providing that solid understanding to that classroom context that they're learning that theory.

It's a very special cultural place because of the three tribal groups of people. They'd all come to meet, this was their gathering place you know where they'd all meet and share things together and when you're going to this special place, respect that place, respect this land that you're on, respect yourself. You know i think that's how Aboriginal people did years ago.

We know that Warrumbungle volcano was active for around three million years in the maya scene epoch dating of lava samples from the base and top of Mount Woorut suggests that the mountain was built over a period of up to two million years from around 18 to 16 million years ago.

The bread knife is a little younger at around 15 million years. The sedimentary foundations of the volcano are 10 times older. The sandstone was deposited during the Jurassic period, the time of the dinosaurs around 150 million years ago

Warrumbungle volcano may have reached up to around a kilometre high above the surrounding land and was perhaps 50 kilometres in diameter.

Some lava flows formed from very runny basalt lava extend even further beyond this, tens of kilometres from the central area.

Warrumbungle volcano was what's known as a shield volcano so the shield is built up from repeated eruptions from a central area over a long period with layer upon layer of volcanic materials including many lava flows.

We can still see remnants of the shield in many areas around the park Mount Woorut, topped by the observatory and Mount Exmouth on the opposite side of the central valley are some of the best preserved of these shield remnants.

[Music]

 I mean ……wouldn't you want to be a kid up here?

[Music]