This is a list of active, dormant and extinct

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates are ...

es in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

and its island territories. Note that the term volcano is used loosely as it can include groups of related volcanoes and vents that erupted at similar times with lava of related origin. The lists provided below are mainly volcanoes of

Cenozoic The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configura ...

aged, with some notable older (

Mesozoic The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceo ...

and

Paleozoic The Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. The name ''Paleozoic'' ( ;) was coined by the British geologist Adam Sedgwick in 1838 by combining the Greek words ''palaiós'' (, "old") and ' ...

aged), volcanoes included. There are no volcanoes on the Australian mainland that have erupted since European settlement, but some volcanoes in Victoria, South Australia and North Queensland could have been witnessed by Aboriginal people several thousand years ago. There are active volcanoes in the Heard and McDonald Islands.

Australian states

Queensland

New South Wales

Victoria

South Australia

South Australia's volcanoes are the youngest in Australia, and erupted within the memory of local Indigenous peoples. They are all in the Limestone Coast region, in the Mount Burr Range. They are considered dormant rather than extinct.

Western Australia

There are no active or dormant volcanoes in Western Australia, although there are a number of extinct ones, and geological evidence of others. There are nineteen small extinct volcanoes in the valley of the Fitzroy River in the Kimberley region of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

. The Kimberley also has a number of groups of

hot spring A hot spring, hydrothermal spring, or geothermal spring is a spring produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater onto the surface of the Earth. The groundwater is heated either by shallow bodies of magma (molten rock) or by circ ...

s, which may be connected with the volcanic activity that produced the extinct volcanoes (but since these volcanic formations are Proterozoic in age – i.e. maybe a billion years old, this would be very unlikely). There are also deposits of

basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanite, aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the planetary surface, surface of a terrestrial ...

at Bunbury and Cape Gosselin.

Tasmania

Territories

Australia Capital Territory

Heard and McDonald Islands

Lord Howe Island

Australia Antarctic Territory

Norfolk Island

Norfolk Island Norfolk Island (, ; Norfuk: ''Norf'k Ailen'') is an external territory of Australia located in the Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and New Caledonia, directly east of Australia's Evans Head and about from Lord Howe Island. Together with ...

and neighbouring Nepean Island and

Phillip Island Phillip Island (Boonwurrung: ''Corriong'', ''Worne'' or ''Millowl'') is an Australian island about south-southeast of Melbourne, Victoria. The island is named after Governor Arthur Phillip, the first Governor of New South Wales, by explorer ...

are mountain top remnants of an elongated

shield volcano A shield volcano is a type of volcano named for its low profile, resembling a warrior's shield lying on the ground. It is formed by the eruption of highly fluid (low viscosity) lava, which travels farther and forms thinner flows than the more v ...

Tasman Sea

Other

References

; Citations ; Sources
Volcanoes of Australia
Volcano World {{refend

External links

Northern Rivers Geology Blog – Volcanoes and Vulcanology

Volcanoes A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates a ...