Top 10 Volcanoes in Australia
Australia is not often described as a volcanic nation, yet the continent's eastern edge hosts one of the world's most extensive intraplate volcanic provinces. From the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland south through New South Wales and into western Victoria, a chain of volcanic fields marks the passage of the Australian Plate over a series of mantle hotspots. The youngest volcanic centres in Victoria's Newer Volcanics Province erupted around 5,000 years ago — meaning Aboriginal Australian communities almost certainly witnessed and described these events in oral tradition. Several volcanic regions also contain lava tube systems of world significance.
The Newer Volcanics Province of Victoria
The Newer Volcanics Province stretches roughly 400 km across western Victoria from Mount Gambier in South Australia to the outskirts of Melbourne, encompassing an area of about 23,000 km². It contains over 400 eruption points — cinder cones, lava shields, maars and scoria cones — making it one of the world's densest concentrations of Quaternary volcanic features. The most recent eruption was at Mount Gambier, South Australia, approximately 5,000 years ago. Mount Eccles (Budj Bim) was active around 30,000 years ago and has lava cave systems used and documented by the Gunditjmara people for at least 6,600 years.
Mount Eccles (Budj Bim) and Gunditjmara Heritage
Budj Bim, the Gunditjmara name for Mount Eccles, is a shield volcano in southwestern Victoria. The lava flows from Budj Bim created a complex wetland system that the Gunditjmara people engineered into an extensive aquaculture network for trapping and farming short-finned eels. This system, the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2019 — notably in the same year as Kakadu National Park's extension. The volcano's lava tubes provided building material and shelter, and the volcanic lake at the summit is sacred in Gunditjmara cosmology.
Tower Hill: Maar Crater and Wildlife Reserve
Tower Hill, near Warrnambool in western Victoria, is a large maar crater formed about 35,000 years ago. The maar is roughly 3 km in diameter and is partially filled with a lake. Inside the crater walls, several younger scoria cones erupted through the floor, creating an island landscape within the larger depression. Tower Hill was the first national park gazetted in Victoria (1892), and following extensive revegetation efforts since the 1960s, it now supports emus, koalas, echidnas and abundant birdlife. Archaeological evidence shows Indigenous occupation of the crater predates its formation, making this one of the few sites worldwide where human presence coincides with the moment of a large volcanic eruption.
Kalkani Crater and Undara Lava Tubes
Kalkani Crater in Queensland's Undara Volcanic National Park produced the longest lava tube system in the world from a single eruption point — the Undara tubes extend approximately 160 km in total mapped length. The eruption occurred roughly 190,000 years ago. The outer shield of the Kalkani crater rises to 256 m above the surrounding Mitchell Grass Downs, and the caves below it maintain a year-round temperature of about 24 °C, creating a microclimate that hosts bat colonies, pythons, and dense rainforest vegetation within the tube entrances — a striking ecological island in the tropical savanna.
Mount Warning (Wollumbin)
Mount Warning in northern New South Wales is the eroded central plug of a massive Cenozoic shield volcano — the Tweed Shield volcano — that was active approximately 22 to 23 million years ago. The original structure was one of the largest volcanoes in Australia, with a base diameter of roughly 100 km. What remains today is the hard phonolite core that resisted erosion, surrounded by the eroded valleys of the Tweed and Richmond rivers radiating outward from the original caldera rim. The summit at 1,157 m is the first place on the Australian mainland to receive sunlight each morning.
Glasshouse Mountains
The Glasshouse Mountains in southeastern Queensland are a group of 13 volcanic plugs and necks erupted about 26 to 27 million years ago during the Eocene-Oligocene transition. The plugs are composed of trachyte and rhyolite and have resisted erosion far better than the surrounding softer sedimentary rock, creating abrupt steep-sided peaks rising up to 556 m at Mount Beerwah. The Glasshouse Mountains are culturally important to the Jinibara and Kabi Kabi peoples. The rock faces attract technical rock climbers, and several peaks are protected within a national park.
Warrumbungle National Park
The Warrumbungle Mountains in central New South Wales formed from volcanic activity between 13 and 17 million years ago. The park protects a striking landscape of spires, domes and fins — the resistant cores and dykes of eroded shield volcanoes. Breadknife, a vertical dyke 90 m tall and only 3 m wide, is the park's most photographed feature. The Warrumbungles host the Siding Spring Observatory, which operates some of Australia's largest optical telescopes, and the dark skies above this volcanic landscape are among the clearest in eastern Australia.
Newer Volcanics Near Melbourne
Several volcanic features lie within an hour's drive of Melbourne. Mount Macedon, though dominated by old granite, is skirted by Newer Volcanics basalt flows. The You Yangs range south of Werribee formed from Cretaceous granite but is surrounded by lava plains. Organ Pipes National Park, north of Melbourne, preserves a spectacular exposure of columnar basalt — vertical hexagonal columns 5–8 m tall formed by slow cooling of a lava flow that pooled in a creek valley around 1 million years ago.
Volcanic Hazard Assessment
Despite Australia's relatively low volcanic activity compared to Pacific Rim neighbours, Geoscience Australia maintains active hazard assessments for the Newer Volcanics Province. The young age of the most recent eruptions means the province cannot be considered extinct. Monitoring involves satellite geodesy and occasional seismic surveys. Any renewed volcanic activity near the province's densely populated southeastern corner — Colac, Ballarat, and the Melbourne outer suburbs — would require significant emergency planning.
Explore on the map
Australia's volcanic provinces are geographically spread and often surprising in their locations — use the interactive map to explore the Newer Volcanics Province in Victoria, the Undara tubes in Queensland, and the ancient eroded plugs of New South Wales. Find Australia on the map and trace the hotspot trail from north Queensland to the Victorian coast where the continent's most recent volcanic activity unfolded.