page_title: Ngarrabullgan
section_title: Geomorphology
hierarchical_section_title: Ngarrabullgan / Geomorphology
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of Ngarrabullgan from the north, taken during a visit in 1991
context_page_description: Ngarrabullgan, officially named Mount Mulligan by the State, is a large tabletop mountain located 100 kilometres west of Cairns in the north of Queensland.
  The tabletop mountain is a monolith bounded by high cliffs that fall 200 to 400 m to the surrounding Hodgkinson Basin, making it an impressive natural monument which is regarded by the local Djungan Aboriginal peoples to be a sacred 'Dreaming' place, and features in the mythological legends and beliefs of other Aboriginal groups for hundreds of kilometres around.
  On the tabletop itself are found the two oldest-known Aboriginal sites in Queensland: Nonda Rock and Ngarrabullgan Cave. Here Aboriginal cultural deposits have been radiocarbon dated, and dated by optically stimulated luminescence, back to 40,000+ years ago.
  Other ancient Aboriginal rockshelter sites on the mountain have been dated to the end of the last Ice Age, and, together, the many 'archaeological' caves and rockshelters found in and around Ngarrabullgan constitutes Queensland's greatest density of known sites dating back more than 4,000 years BP.
context_section_description: The mountain was originally formed in a narrow faulted rift (running in a general south-east to north-west direction) within the deformed and folded metamorphic rock (arenite) of the Hodgkinson Basin.  Successive layers of sediment were deposited into this rift filling it first with Permian coal (at its base), then Permian conglomerates, with Triassic sandstones above. With tectonic uplift the original arenite surrounding the deposits eroded away leaving Ngarrabullgan as a free-standing conglomerate and sandstone massif.
caption: Ngarrabullgan from the north
exif: {}