Mount Warrnambool facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Mount Warrnambool |
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 Mount Warrnambool
Location in Victoria
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| Last eruption | over 5,000 years ago |
Mount Warrnambool is a large scoria cone volcano in Australia. It stands about 216 meters (709 feet) tall. This impressive landform is located about 16 kilometers (10 miles) southwest of Terang, Victoria. You can often see it from the Princes Highway when traveling towards Warrnambool.
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Mount Warrnambool: A Volcano Story
Mount Warrnambool shows us many cool things about how volcanoes work. It has features from different kinds of eruptions. These include lava flows, a special type of explosion called a maar eruption, and Strombolian-style activity. The last time this volcano erupted was over 5,000 years ago. This means it is now an inactive volcano.
Layers of Rock: Lava and Tuff
The area around Mount Warrnambool has layers of different volcanic rocks. These layers are made of lava and tuff. Lava is molten rock that flows out of a volcano. Tuff is a rock made from volcanic ash and small rock pieces that fall from the air during an eruption.
A partial ring of tuff can be seen around the east and north sides of the volcano. This tuff ring might go all the way around, but lava flows have covered other parts of it.
What We Learn from Quarries
People have dug up tuff from a quarry on the north side of the Princes Highway. This tuff is very hard now. It formed when volcanic ash settled and hardened. Inside the quarry, you can see interesting rock structures. These include signs of a base surge, which is a fast-moving cloud of gas and ash. You can also see where volcanic bombs (large pieces of rock thrown out by the volcano) landed and made dents in the ash layers.
Dating the Rocks
Scientists can figure out how old these rocks are. The basalt rock found under the tuff layers is very old. It formed about 2.2 million years ago. A different layer of basalt, found on top of the tuff, is younger. It formed about 0.57 million years ago. These dates help us understand the long history of Mount Warrnambool's eruptions.
Visiting the Summit
There is a small piece of public land at the very top of Mount Warrnambool. An access track leads up to a fire tower on the summit. However, this track is not open to the public for safety reasons.
