The mountain has seen many changes over its 400,000 million year old history.

A sacred monolith, known for centuries by the custodians, the local Djungan people, as Ngarrabullgan, it’s one of two Dreamtime rock formations in far north Queensland – pushed up as the gigantic Rainbow Serpent passed by.

Implacable to human intrusion, this immense, sandstone monolith rising from the Hodgkinson plateau in the outback west of Cairns.

It stretches 18 klms long by 6.5 klms wide – making it almost 10 times the size of Uluru. Ngarrabullgan is formidable, beautiful and memorable.

Never-before-seen slide images from the top of Ngarrabullgan and below – taken in the early 1950s by a miner and keen photographer, Mr Collins; and given to my uncle, Patrick O’Neill, Mt Mulligan’s station-master.

The monolith’s origins were the coral seabeds 400 million years ago, and its multi-million year old history evident in the layers of its strata. Cave paintings on the mountain’s top prove the continual 37,000 year existence of the first indigenous inhabitants.

When the Irish explorer (and prospector), Venture Mulligan first sighted the mountain in the late 1800s, he said it was ‘a mountain once seen, never to be forgotten‘. Then he found traces of gold, and that was it for the millions of years of peaceful existence between the mountain and humans. And Ngarrabullgan watched on those who sought to exploit its scant reserves of gold failed – then they found a lode of coal.

The coal miners and their families came to Mt Mulligan, living in its shadow and tunneling two miles beneath it. Until one Monday morning in September 1921, exactly one hundred years ago, the mountain upended human lives with catastrophic shrug.

A quarter of the tiny mining town’s citizens died in an instant when the coal dust ignited and exploded – 75 miners; two of them only boys – affecting almost every family in town.

Only the graveyard remains today of Mt Mulligan’s town – except for a few house stumps, and the old hospital, now a homestead. The mine’s chimney is still in situ, as well as the Mining Union’s memorial that lists the names of all those killed in the explosion.

Another change has come to Ngarrabullgan these days – a luxury Eco-lodge built down by the weir, the most pretty part of the area. Sadly, out of my price range, it is tastefully done. They knocked out the stumps of the school house and many other dwellings to build the lodges.

But at least the management insists the mountain, Ngarrabullgan is still shown respect – nobody is allowed to climb to the top. So, there is hope humans will no longer negatively impact upon Ngarrabullgan.

This Sunday, 19th September, 2021 at 9.30 am, people will gather for the 100 year Memorial Service at Mt Mulligan. I can’t be at the site sadly, but I will see it via Facebook Live Stream.

All images on this page are protected under copyright.

Every time I write a novel, I don’t plan to add something I’m passionate about – like art, music, history, theatre, politics, or even digging up fossils. It enters a story because it’s what my protagonist demands. This thing, this passion, then becomes the story’s narrative device, or icon.

With Secrets of Eromanga, it was a longtime interest in fossils, Australian dinosaurs and geology. With Sweet Adversity, it was a love of Shakespeare’s plays and stage drama in general (perhaps inherited from my grandmother, Gracie O’Neill, who produced theatre and variety musical shows in the far northern town of Innisfail, back in the 1950s. She deserves a post all on her own!!)

My other work-in-progress novel has classical music. Set in 18th Century Venice – with the Baroque era’s tremendous surge of innovative music. Of course, the city’s most famous son, composer and virtuoso violinist, Antonio Vivaldi is there with his all-female choir of orphans, and street-urchin, Caterina.

With my 2022 historical adventure work-in-progress, the icon is the camera. I didn’t plan it. My protagonist needed it – for her spirit’s survival.

A powerful visual aid for this young Welsh Romani immigrant to see the world? Absolutely.

It’s the right era to use photography as a narrative tool. The early 20th century saw the Kodak company develop small, affordable cameras that ordinary people could use. And they sure did!

This was a novel of discovery for both Lela and me – the Kale Romani, culture, history, language, discrimination / the White Australia Policy / bigotry, racism / immigration / coalmine disasters / early photography and cameras.

Photography has been in my life since I was 7 years old. My father gave me his old Box Brownie camera (like the one in the image above). I remember looking down at the view finder and seeing my family upside-down. But magically, the photos printed the right way up.

Finally, at 25, I learned to develop black and white images in a bathroom ‘dark-room’ – hot and dark with windows covered in black-out curtains, trying to avoid breathing in the fumes drifting off trays of chemicals. And then, printing the photographs.

I’ve owned many cameras since those days – learning through books and experience what makes a good image. I also discovered the magic of photography. Very much like my 13 year old protagonist.

NEWS! I won a bid on a 1915 Kodak #1 Autographic Junior camera. It’s from France and likely was used during WW1, when these cameras because the tools for those who recorded the battlefields in film.

Image: Princess Ileana of Romania with her mother’s camera, circa 1919