Geologists say the mountain is about 250 million years old; The solidified magma has gradually been eroded and now reaches 300 m in height. Under the influence of the weather, the granite blocks collapsed, crumbled at the edges, until they were crushed to the size of the current blocks.
Lovers of mysticism, however, claim that this mountain was built by someone, that it is the ruins of an ancient civilization that existed at the very beginning of time.
- Like an island in the middle of a sea of eucalyptus trees, a giant mass of boulders stretches towards the sky of Australia. This is Black Mountain, known to the natives as "Kalkajaka", perhaps the most mysterious and frightening place in northern Queensland, 25 km south of the city of Cooktown, - says Ivan Makerle, Czech explorer of the unknown. legends. Whites are also afraid - because of the many stories of those who went there and did not return, as if swallowed by the mountain itself. Even birds and animals avoid this place, and planes do not fly here because of some special turbulence in the air and disturbances of the magnetic field.
“We did not expect the mountain to look so strange: it resembled a pile of coal left by a giant truck in the middle of the green expanse of trees,” Ivan continues. “Only this pile was almost 3 km long, and what seemed like lumps of coal were actually huge black blocks, some of which reached 6 m in length.
The remains of the mountain, it is believed, must hide wonderful secrets - the chronicles of ancient wisdom, the annals of kings and fabulous treasures, and on the way to the very heart of the mountain are the guardians of these miracles, the spirits of the dead, demons and poisonous snakes. A modern legend assures that inside the mountain there is a passage to an underground empire inhabited by a race of alien reptilians (reptilians), who are served by human slaves.
The mountain's reputation was confirmed by the people we spoke to at the Lion Denn Hotel, a meeting place for all Aboriginal people, white farmers and casual tourists. We sat down with the bearded farmer Peter Fitzgerald and told him that we wanted to search Black Mountain. He looked at us in amazement for a while, and then said: “You either don't know anything, or you are crazy. She swallowed all the tourists, farmers, policemen, a whole tribe of natives and herd of cattle.
Promotional video:
He took us to the veranda where two natives were sitting. We ordered a beer and they began to tell us an ancient legend.
A long time ago, when the human race was still very young, here in a tribe that lived near a mountain range, a terrible man settled down, a healer named "Flesh Eater." His craving for human flesh was so great that the superstitious aborigines, out of fear of his power, sometimes allowed him to eat an old woman or a terminally ill.
But once, when he was very hungry, he overstepped all boundaries and devoured the young leader, whom he found sleeping. The whole tribe rose up against him, but the spell helped him turn into a terrible snake. He crawled away, and settled in the very heart of the bare and desolate Black Mountain. Only hunger lured him out. But since then neither people nor animals have lived near this mountain.
Naturally, we saw nothing in this story, except for the old woman's tales. But they were very intrigued when they heard that the mountain still makes mysterious sounds: screaming, crying, sobbing, loud beats and unearthly music. You better stay away - it was told us in the end.
Of course, unable to resist such a challenge, Danny and I decided that we would camp at the foot of the mountain, and the rest of our group would stay at the hotel. The bed of the dried-up river led us where we need to. It was a gloomy, scary place, shaded by twisted trees and dusty bushes with withered flowers. Glossy boulders loomed above us, and black chasms, emitting an eerie stench, were visible through holes in the ground right below our feet.
At about 7 o'clock, night fell sharply, as is usually the case in the tropics, and all we could discern by the light of a small gas lamp were the vague silhouettes of trees forming an intertwined, impenetrable wall. For the next two hours, we chatted, listening to the sounds of the forest and looking at the dark ledges of boulders that piled up around our tent.
A sense of the ancient history of this gloomy landscape gradually took possession of us, and we began to seriously expect something like that, which we had heard about in the legends about Mount Kalkajak, will happen. However, experience told us that a quiet night awaited us without incident. If we knew how wrong we were!
At about 10 o'clock a strong wind rose and a crackling sound began to be heard from the tops of the trees. We crawled into the tent, lay down on the mattresses and stared at the black fabric of the ceiling, listening intently to every sound.
The night screams of the primeval forest at first seemed terrible, full of eerie howls mixed with wild laughter and the occasional crackling of branches broken by the wind. But little by little we got used to them and began to fall asleep, when suddenly complete silence reigned. Not only the wind died down, but all the sounds made by the animals stopped.
The silence was deafening. We began to make fun of each other, saying that it was probably some kind of ghost, and suddenly we heard a stone roll off the cliff directly above us, as if something was slowly crawling towards us from the mountain. We thought it was an animal, but when it finally slid down, something that we heard seemed to us like the sounds of the footsteps of a person who, apparently, was heading towards our tent.
“Let's see who it is,” Danny shouted, unbuttoning the tent with a sharp motion. I jumped out after him, with a lantern in one hand and a knife in the other. An oval beam snatched from the darkness a formless dark mass that swayed in front of the gloomy wall of black bushes and trees and soon dissipated completely. Everything was quiet.
I must say that we were a little scared. We carefully examined the place around our tent, looking for possible traces, and even shouted towards the dark forest, but to no avail. One dead silence was our answer. We crawled back into the tent, but no longer joked about ghosts. Nightlife returned to the primeval forest, its usual music, which, as we now knew, was completely harmless, sounded again. But still, I didn't fall asleep until dawn.
Cooktown historian Hans Locep is a true fan of the mysteries of Blackrock Mountain, although he would never be dragged into its underground galleries. An elderly man, he has spent his entire life collecting Aboriginal myths and legends about Black Mountain, memories of those who mysteriously disappeared here, and eyewitness reports.
When we visited his apartment, he showed the folders that had turned yellow with time. One of them contained a conversation that happened 70 years ago with a certain Sergeant McCormick from Cooktown - a conversation about people who disappeared inside the mountain: the story begins almost immediately after the founding of the first white settlement here.
The first known case occurred in 1877. His victim was a postman named Greiner, who was looking for a calf that had beaten off the herd on horseback; the man, the horse, and the calf disappeared without a trace. A few years later, after a shootout with his pursuers, the escaped convict Jack-Sugarfoot and two of his friends hid inside the mountain. Nobody saw them again.
Thirteen years later, Constable Ryan from the Cooktown precinct chased the culprit and came to the bottom. Other police officers followed in his tracks, saw that they were going deep into one cave, but they never met Ryan himself. A gold digger named Rennes was soon added to the list of the missing. For several weeks the police ransacked the entire neighborhood - but in vain.
Harry Owens, owner of Oakley Creekstation, rode out on horseback one Saturday morning to Black Mountain, looking for the missing cattle. When he did not return in time, his partner, George Hawkins, reported the loss to the police and, without waiting, went out to search. By the time the police started looking, he also disappeared. Two native policemen followed his footsteps into one cave. One came out alive, but was in such a state that he could not really tell anything.
In the 1920s, two young European cave explorers decided they had to solve this riddle. But nobody else heard anything about them or the two police officers who followed in their tracks.
The last tragedy happened in 1932. Sharpie named Harry Page disappeared, but the police managed to find him. Unfortunately, it was too late. He was dead. What happened to all these people? The answer must lie in the grief itself - and that is where we headed.
Finding the entrance was easy; the whole mountain is dotted with black chasms. Some of the passages were no more than a few feet deep, others were lost in impenetrable darkness. We had no choice but to try our fate, we threw the rope and began to climb down through one of the larger holes. Inside they found a spacious room, from which corridors extended in all directions. We decided to start with the widest one, which led diagonally downward.
After going about 9 meters, we entered another dark room. And again four corridors branched out. The first two turned out to be dead ends. At the beginning of the third, we had to crawl, but soon a rather high tunnel opened, curving clockwise, and it was possible to stand in it. Here our sense of orientation began to fail. It was too easy to go astray and so we decided to mark it with our climbing rope.
The narrow tunnel led straight and was easy to walk through. Then, suddenly, he made a sharp turn and the vault over our heads fell. Suddenly a huge bat darted towards us. In a narrow corridor, she narrowly escaped us, and we felt the wind raised by her wings on their very faces.
We saw more bats hanging from the ledge and swaying monotonously. With lanterns in hand, we examined the walls and vaults of the ceiling, which protruded from all sides and were abruptly lost in some kind of maze ahead. Unfortunately, the journey ended here.
A huge block, which once fell off the ceiling, made further movement impossible. As I squeezed into the crack below it, a large flat stone swayed treacherously under my feet. I should have slipped down, but thanks to the rope, I avoided falling into the abyss that suddenly opened below me. All around, all the stones, began to slide, pounding madly against the walls; the echo told us that the abyss was several meters deep. I was on the verge of death.
Over the next few days, we returned there, tried our luck in various places and soon realized that an intricate underground network of passages ran under the entire mountain. So we could go further down and explore where the paths lead; but in the end Black Mountain has always managed to keep its secret. We were unable to penetrate her legendary heart.
Whether there are mysterious halls in this heart full of coffins and treasures, or there is nothing but solid rock, as geologists say, it is difficult to say. However, rumors that the mountain is hollow inside do not seem unfounded. Locals once saw smoke from a burning bush that hit the mountain from one side and fell out from the opposite.
The mysterious disappearances, however, may have a simple explanation. Those who did not mark their way through this eerie maze could simply get lost, panic, injured their leg or something else and get stuck inside the mountain forever. The mysterious sounds that sometimes come from it can be produced by wind, falling rocks or even rock breaks caused by sudden changes in temperature.
However, we were unable to explain one riddle. Who or what walked near our tent at night? Perhaps it was an underground inhabitant - a "reptilian"?
From the book "The Supernatural Forces of Nature"