Northern NSW Is Hiding a Giant Volcano

Behind the surf beaches and banana farms of northern New South Wales sits the worn-down heart of one of the biggest volcanoes this continent has ever seen. A 40 km crater valley, a rainforest handed down from Gondwana, a tree nobody described until 2000, a diamond field geologists still can't explain, and a granite dome big enough to lose a small town on. Here are 14 facts about northern NSW that most Australians have never heard.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
0:33 Fact 14: Not the NSW you picture
1:17 Fact 13: A crater you drive through
2:20 Fact 12: First light on the mainland
3:05 Fact 11: A survivor from Gondwana
3:52 Fact 10: A tree unknown to science
4:51 Fact 9: The rainforest that vanished
6:03 Fact 8: Waterfalls off the edge
6:51 Fact 7: The river they want inland
7:36 Fact 6: Two raindrops, two oceans
8:22 Fact 5: Not in the red centre
8:52 Fact 4: Diamonds with no source
9:56 Fact 3: Tin and sapphires
10:53 Fact 2: A paddock near Bingara
11:55 Fact 1: The eastern edge
12:39 Recap
13:34 The other New South Wales

SOURCES (facts)
NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service; Geoscience Australia; Australian Government DCCEEW (Gondwana Rainforests World Heritage, National Heritage List: Myall Creek); NSW Government (Wollumbin summit track closure); NSW Resources (fossicking permits, New England diamond and tin fields).

PHOTO CREDITS (Wikimedia Commons): full per-image credit list (~100 images, CC BY / CC BY-SA / CC0 / public domain) is too long for the YouTube description limit; see description_v4.txt.

Maps: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); Natural Earth.
Music: "Silent Watchers".

AI DISCLOSURE: Narration is AI-generated (ElevenLabs) from an original script. The following stills are AI-generated illustrations, not photographs of the actual places or events: the Myall Creek sequence (six stills, including the courtroom), one gravel-panning still, the 1979 Terania Creek protest, Nightcap oak seedlings being planted, the dry Clarence River in the 2019 drought, and Chinese miners at the Tingha tin fields around 1880. All other images are real photographs credited above.