MT ETNA, CENTRAL QUEENSLAND – 20-30 April 2026
We had organised a “day off” for Monday (and a day trip over to Great Keppel Island), and then we heard that everyone was going to have a day off on Sunday, followed by a BBQ in the evening. What to do? Two days off in a row? So, we decided to do a short walk up a small hill. This was the first of three “let’s check out” short walks over the next week. As most of you know, I don’t usually get out of bed for a day walk, but my standards must be getting really low, I was going on a 1/4 day walk – not even a 1/2 day walk!
But, I have to say, each one was worth getting out of bed for.
Sunday 26 April – Our accommodation was at Lammermoor, and to get to Mt Etna each day, we travelled the Yeppoon Road, and each day we looked at this 221m volcanic plug on the side of the road, it was calling to us “climb me!” So, we did!
Baga is one of 13 volcanic plugs in the area, also known as volcanic necks, and is the only one in the area that is protected by being in a national park and is managed by the Park and the Darumbal First Nations people. The plubs form when magma rises through a volcano’s centre but solidifies before reaching the surface. Over time, the surrounding volcanic cone (softer materials like ash, rock etc) erodes faster than the dense solidified magma, what’s left is this plug, there are heaps of them in the Rockhampton area.
The volcanic plug that we climbed.
We were in Baga National Park. There was a great interpretive sign and another tourist sign that said “follow the forest trail”, so we did.
The obligatory NP sign “don’t go further than this” meaning that if you do, they are not responsible for your fall off the side of the plug. We read it, but followed the well used track – we’re bushwalkers/cavers/canyoners, we won’t fall (famous last words – but we didn’t fall).
Easy walk up to the top, great views.
From here you can see the other plugs, two on the far left and the others on the right.
And here’s a really good shot of one.
Lovely spot for morning tea.
Nature’s “graffiti”, the colour of the lichen is similar to the chalk colour of some of the Johansen cave.
I was taking a day’s holiday from graffiti removal, and what do you know, I found more. At the start of the climb up, it started. Why would you need to put arrows, there’s a track! And, you could really go only one way UP! If you went off the track, you’d soon see that there was a cliff, a normal person would know to stop and go back to the track! and the one on the far right, WTF is that?
Probably a 3k walk (if that!), we took our time and enjoyed the views, probably spent 1.5 hours for the walk, but it was a great, well worth doing,
Monday 27 April – At the BBQ on Sunday night, someone said that they’d visited Fan Rock – it sounded intriguing so on Monday morning, we set aside an hour before we were to catch the boat out to Great Keppel Island and visited this geographical site. We started the walk at Double Head.
We found a well defined track directing us to Fan Rock.
And it had good steps, not to high!
The track took us to the lookout point, and it’s obvious why they call it Fan Rock. Really impressive. Apparently, around 60m years ago, when the Australian plate was gradually edging north, as weak spots in the earth’s crust passed over an area of deep hear, molten lava forced its way through layers of rock, creating a chain of volcanoes. The hexagonal columns indicate that the thick lava slowly cooled from the outside then solidified, then shrunk and cracked. Surface cracks grew deeper as the rock below cooled, forming prominent columns fanning out from the centre of the volcano. Wind and water eroded the surface lava and soft rock exposing the volcanic plug and the fan effect.
If you leaned right out over the railing, you could see an arch and an opening – a possible cave at the end of the gully?
We reversed back to the track and took the steps to the top of the hill.
Looking out over the marina and the hill that we would climb the next day (looking for caves that we could see from this vantage point).
On the top of the hill, we came across grass trees (Xanthorrhoea), they are smaller than those in NSW, and the flower stalks are much smaller than NSW.
The flower stalks of the grass trees.
Really worthwhile 1 hour walk! Not even a 1/4 day walk!
Tuesday – 28 April – as a result of seeing possible “caves” we set out on Tuesday to see what we could find (everyone else had gone to Great Keppel Island so we had another rest day).
We started the walk on a good track heading to Pebble Beach (220m from where we parked the car).
And it certainly was a pebbly beach. We first checked out the dark part in far left – nothing to see there!
I was keep to follow the shoreline around the bluff.
The rocks looked slippery but amazingly it wasn’t slippery at all.
Rod and I walked a little further on (about the middle of the image) and then decided to turn around. Garry and Jim (in the distance) continued on and it was a mere 100m to where we parked the car. They then made their way back to the track that we’d originally followed, where we met up with them.
Looking back the way we’d come.
Surprisingly, I didn’t take any photos of the track that we took to the top of the bluff. We stopped about 10m from the top.
I sat down and waited while the guys went off to find the “cave”, was too exposed for me. They came back about 10 minutes later, another “nothing to see there”.
We then continued to climb up to the top (photo: Garry K Smith). The knoll in the middle of the image is where we were the day before (at Fan Rock).
It was very windy on top, we stayed there for about 10min enjoying the view then headed back down.
Back down at sea level, we followed a faint track to this (at the back of Pebble Beach), it had a sign on it about a “labyrinth” – someone had spent a lot of time making it. It appeared that this was also an old quarry.
Where they’d quarried the rock, this also looks like the Fan Rock that we’d seen the day before, although not as impressive as the Fan Rock.
Probably not even 1k of walking and an hour if that! Again, not even a 1/4 day walk!
Having said that, each walk was an adventure and we really took advantage of each one! Thanks for Rod, Jim and Garry for doing the walks!