Could This Be A Record,

for the longest underground burning coal seam?

going now for it is thought 5,500 years, BurningMountain is Australia’s only naturally burning coal seam, as well as it is thought the world’s oldest coal fire, to the original Aboriginal owners of this land, it’s the fiery tears of a woman long since turned to stone by Biami, the sky god. To early explorers, it showed the obvious signs of volcanic activities, but in reality, it’s a slow-burning seam of coal smoldering about 30 meters underground, photograph nationalparks.nsw.gov.au, underground coal seam fires are not at all uncommon, in fact it’s estimated that about 1,000 coal seams are burning around the world at any one point, such fires usually occur in coal-rich but less-developed countries,  

in fact we have mentioned coal seam fires before before in this post, in which we mention this chilling fact, ‘underground fires in China alone contribute as much CO2 to the atmosphere each year as all the cars and light trucks in the U.S.’ the underground fire of Burning Mountain has been slowly moving southwards, at a rate of about a meter a year, and it is believed that in its entire 6,000-year history, it has covered a distance of about 6.5 kilometres, no one knows exactly how the fire started, but scientists believe it must have been a lightning strike or a bushfire, although Aboriginals’ burning practices could be a cause as well. The slow combustion has caused soil discoloration and an uneven ground surface on Mount Wingen. Vegetation in the area has also been affected by the underground fire, as evidenced by the increasingly bare and barren area as one approaches the smoking vents of Burning Mountain, despite the barren look of the area, Burning Mountain has become somewhat of a tourist attraction, with thousands of people flocking to this place to see the world’s oldest continuously burning coal fire. Or at least the smoke caused by it, as the smouldering coals are tens of meters underground, I am not sure I would want to visit this place, the thought of the crust giving way and dropping through to a fiery hell does not appeal, at all!