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Walking Through Time: Lake Barrine (Barany), Atherton Tablelands
Shaped by geology and people
At six o’clock in the morning, as sunlight seeps through the rainforest canopy, Chowchillas are busy in the leaf litter. These handsome birds — males are dark chocolate brown and white with a white eye ring, females wear a russet bib — are quietly industrious for most of the day, but at dawn, they fill the rainforest with their calls. We’re here, they sing. This is our place.
About 16,000 years ago, magma met groundwater creating superheated steam that blew out a crater a kilometre (3280 feet) in diameter and more than 65 metres (213 feet) at its deepest point. The crater — technically, a maar — filled with water. Lake Barrine (Barany) is one of three maars on the Atherton Tablelands formed from volcanic activity over 23,000 years. The others are Lake Euramoo and Lake Eacham (Yidyam). The Ngadjon-ji People record the eruption of at least one of these maars in a Dreaming story.
Barany’s history is trapped in the sediments that line its floor. For the first few thousand years, its walls were lightly vegetated. Rain created just a scattering of permanent pools. Most of what fell soon…
