Mount Maroon is a mountain in
South East Queensland
South East Queensland (SEQ) is a bio-geographical, metropolitan, political and administrative region of the state of Queensland in Australia, with a population of approximately 3.8 million people out of the state's population of 5.1 million. T ...
that is part of the
McPherson Range
The McPherson Range is an extensive mountain range, a spur of the Great Dividing Range, heading in an easterly direction from near Wallangarra to the Pacific Ocean coastline. It forms part of the Scenic Rim on the border between the states of Ne ...
. The mountain rises to above sea level about 12 km west of
Rathdowney
Rathdowney or Rathdowny () is a town in southwest County Laois, Ireland. It lies some 32 km southwest of Portlaoise in the Irish Midlands, at the point where the R433 regional road from Abbeyleix to Templemore is crossed by the R435 fro ...
.
The original indigenous name for the mountain is Wahlmoorum which means sand goanna in the Yuggera language.
Another aboriginal name documented for the mountain is Dahl-moor-uhn, which means "big fellow waterhole bunyip" attributed to two small yet deep lagoons, on the summit of the mountain. The earliest photograph of the lagoons are from 1910. The current name for the mountain comes from the first grazing property in the area called Maroon.
Mount Maroon consists mainly of
rhyolite
Rhyolite ( ) is the most silica-rich of volcanic rocks. It is generally glassy or fine-grained (aphanitic) in texture, but may be porphyritic, containing larger mineral crystals (phenocrysts) in an otherwise fine-grained groundmass. The mineral ...
and has its geological origins in the cooling of molten rock beneath the surface.
The mountain was first gazetted in 1938 as Mount Maroon National Park.
In 1950,
Mount Barney National Park
Mount Barney National Park is a national park in Queensland (Australia), 90 km southwest of Brisbane. It amalgamated the adjacent Mount Lindesay (Queensland), Mount Lindesay National Park in 1980. It is part of the Scenic Rim Important Bird ...
was extended to include Mount Maroon and nearby
Mount May
Mount is often used as part of the name of specific mountains, e.g. Mount Everest.
Mount or Mounts may also refer to:
Places
* Mount, Cornwall, a village in Warleggan parish, England
* Mount, Perranzabuloe, a hamlet in Perranzabuloe parish, C ...
.
The mountain contains areas of montane
heath
A heath () is a shrubland habitat found mainly on free-draining infertile, acidic soils and characterised by open, low-growing woody vegetation. Moorland is generally related to high-ground heaths with—especially in Great Britain—a cooler ...
vegetation, rocky pavement and
mallee ash shrublands.
[Mount Barney National Park: Visitor Information rochure Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. 2001. Environmental Protection Agency.]
Three
rock climber
Rock climbing is a sport in which participants climb up, across, or down natural rock formations. The goal is to reach the summit of a formation or the endpoint of a usually pre-defined route without falling. Rock climbing is a physically and ...
s had to be rescued from the mountain in 2002.
In early 2008 a bull mastiff named Diff made headlines when it slipped over a ledge and had to be rescued via
helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...
.
The dog, which was not permitted to be in the national park, led rescuers (by its barking) to two men who were stranded on a steep cliff ledge when trying to rescue the dog.
See also
*
List of mountains in Australia
This is a list of mountains in Australia.
Highest points by state and territory
List of mountains in Australia by topographic prominence
This is a list of the top 50 mountains in Australia ranked by topographic prominence. Most of these ...
References
Maroon
Maroon ( US/ UK , Australia ) is a brownish crimson color that takes its name from the French word ''marron'', or chestnut. "Marron" is also one of the French translations for "brown".
According to multiple dictionaries, there are var ...
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