Sexy volcanos

“In another life, I might have been tempted to become a volcanologist,” our bleeding explorer ponders.

Volcanoes are geologically fascinating and have very beautiful natural features.

Of course, volcanic eruptions can also be incredibly violent and destructive, so perhaps there is a little fear-factor component to my interest. But on a side note, I dislike the term natural disasters – we live on a dynamic planet, and volcanoes are only doing what they do.

After all, an eruption is only a disaster when it affects us humans who insist on living near them either due to necessity or in blissful ignorance of the risks.

Australia is, unfortunately, not an excellent location for the volcano enthusiast. Our stable techtonic plates ensures no active volcanoes unless you count Heard Island, which, though an Australian territory, is halfway to Antarctica and undeniably remote.

Luckily, the advent of drones, volcano monitoring and web-cams does give us all the ability to “be there” anywhere in the world, from the comfort of our homes.

Having grown up in Victoria, I had easy access to very young volcanic rocks like the scoria cones on the Western Plains and the craters at Tower Hill. These areas were active so short ago, maybe 5,000 or 10,000 years before the present, that they are technically still dormant rather than extinct.

One university field trip I remember fondly involved cracking basaltic lava bombs to find mantle xenoliths, collections of exotic green minerals brought to the surface from the earth’s bowels so recently and quickly that they have not yet had time to weather away.

I’ve since been lucky enough to travel to several active volcanoes, which are truly awe-inspiring. Getting up close to active lava flows in Hawaii is probably as close to a religious experience that I have ever had.

My spouse was probably less enamoured about that trip after being instructed for the 100th time to get into the photo “because I need something to show the scale”.

The warnings to tourists about horrific ways to die probably didn’t help either.

Climbing Mt Apo in the Philippines is also an experience that I will never forget due to both the incredible landscape and the active sulphur fumaroles that we stupidly insisted on documenting, despite the regular belches of choking hydrogen sulphide gas.

My work has  taken me to some other stunning volcanic arcs around the western Pacific, New Zealand and the west of US but the bucket list remains fulls with the Andes, Iceland and Kamchatka in the Russian far east coming first mind on the next-to-do-list.

Volcanic terranes are critical to those of us in the mineral exploration game. Though they might be ancient, deformed, altered and metamorphosed and generally tortured by geological processes, many mineral deposits are intrinsically linked to volcanic activity or rocks.

I regularly find myself trying to imagine how the environment must have looked back in the day and what set of extraordinary circumstances have resulted in the formation and preservation of those deposits.

Ultimately, I think that if money were no object, getting up close to a few more volcanoes would be an excellent way for me to spend some quality geological time.

Please note the following valuable information before using this website. 

Independent Research 

Market Open Australia is intended to be used only for educational and informative purposes, and any information on this website should not be taken as investment advice or guidance. It is important to conduct your own research before making any investment decisions, which should be based on your own investment needs and personal circumstances. Any investment decisions based on information contained on this website should be taken in line with independent financial advice from a qualified professional or should be independently researched and verified.