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When is The Crater not a crater? Mt Hypipamee National Park, Atherton Tablelands, Far North Queensland
It’s a long way from the top
In early August 2011, a team of divers descended into the crater at Mount Hypipamee on the Atherton Tablelands to carry out a scientific survey. The water’s surface, covered in a blanket of bilious green duckweed, was almost 60 metres below the edge, and the near vertical walls above it had no ledges or footholds. To reach it required abseiling, aided by pulleys, rope ladders and inner tubes converted into makeshift boats. The water was murky. Above the divers, tiny white shrimp skittered between the roots of the floating weed. Around them, bacteria grew in thick grey mats, dangling in long threads like impossibly fragile, living stalactites. They found no fish or aquatic insects, but glimpsed one freshwater turtle that might well have been reconsidering its life choices.
Although it looks like the core of a volcano, the confusingly named ‘Crater’ is actually a diatreme, a tube blasted through the bedrock by an explosion of gas in one gargantuan geological fart. It is about 140 metres (460 feet) deep, of which 80 metres (262 feet) is water. Although the granite in which it lies was formed 320 million years ago, the diatreme is thought to be only thousands rather than millions of years old. Blocks of rock hurled out by…
