Well, in Australia we have volcanoes that are considered “active”, and earthquakes are almost a daily affair.

There are 400 volcanoes between Melbourne and Mount Gambier, where the Blue Lake is the symbol of an eruption about 5000 years ago.

It may erupt again sometime in the next 5000 years, giving those people whose houses are almost on the rim quite a fright.

Volcanoes helped form the Great Dividing Range, creating spectacular scenery like The Warrumbungles.

The Snowy Mountains were active more than 17-million years ago.

Mount Canobolas erupted only 12-million years ago, so don’t think of moving to Orange!

Volcanoes are great places to visit. A few years back we visited Undara Volcanic National Park on our way home from Cairns.

The inland route to Wagga is quite interesting if you don’t mind just a few kilometres of very remote countryside! Undara is about 300km from Cairns, via Atherton, Herberton, Ravenshoe and then along the Mount Garnet road to Mount Surprise.

Keep going and the road reaches the Gulf of Carpentaria so you might guess that this is not a summer trip.

The tourist pamphlet adds, “The weather at Undara Volcanic National Park is hot, humid and can be very wet from late October through to late March. September and early October are generally dry and hot. The drier, cooler months of April to August are considered the preferred time to visit.”  

Anyway, since you’ll be doing a lot of walking if you divert to places like the Chillagoe Caves, you’ll want the weather to be cool.

We were there in October, and it was comfortably hot!

The relatively mild uphill walk to the Kalkani Crater is nothing like the walk up The Rock. The path is fairly smooth, because this extinct volcano has been weathered so much in the last 190,000 years that when you reach the summit you could be forgiven for thinking that it is just another outback hill.

But there it is, the crater is still visible, even though mature scrub now occupies the bowl-like shape. And in the distance is the string of volcanoes that were active not all that long ago in geological terms - mere thousands of years ago, not millions!

Not far from Kalkani’s dome are the lava tubes for which this area is famous. The official Queensland Department of Environment and Science website explains that the Undara lava tubes are one of the longest lava tube cave systems in the world.

“The lava flowed rapidly down a dry riverbed. The top, outer-layer cooled and formed a crust, while the molten lava below drained outwards, leaving behind a series of hollow tubes.”

High carbon dioxide levels in some tubes, and concealed holes where the tubes have collapsed “make the lava tube area dangerous for visitors without an experienced guide.”

Our guide was a local who doubled as a school bus driver, so he had plenty of good stories about the tubes as well as local folklore.

Inside, these tubes resemble curving tunnels, cavernous in places. The walls are brightly coloured rock. The floor is mostly smooth and easy enough for even the most elderly walker, except for the actual cave entrance where some assistance may be required.

In Australia we consider ourselves immune from volcanic activity and even earthquakes, but they can happen. The Newcastle earthquake on December 28, 1989 killed 13 people and injured more than 160. 

We have visited Meckering in Western Australia, where in 1968 the whole town was destroyed by Australia’s most severe earthquake, 6.9 on the Richter scale.

It was a public holiday, and no-one was killed despite the town being destroyed!

Minor earthquakes are happening all the time. On Christmas Day, Hawker in South Australia experienced a 2.0 magnitude shake, and Central Ranges in the Northern Territory a 3.1 shake. 

Go to www.volcanodiscovery.com/earthquakes/australia.html and you will find that maybe not volcanoes, but earthquakes in Australia are almost a daily occurrence!

Our Earth is a living planet. How safe will you feel tonight?