Major Mitchell recorded a "low booming sound in August 1846 in central Qld; "which appeared to be a meteor, a whirling mass, or revolving red ball of light, passing southward."

Wills reported the same experience on Coopers Creek in his diary found after the ill fated Burke expedition in the 1860's.

Brewarrina Aboriginal Jimmy Barker recorded in his book that tribes who moved along the upper Darling often heard these extremely loud noises and believed them to be omens, evil spirits or the departing spirit of someone dying.

There are no certain conclusion - meteors? gas? spirits? heat explosions? Read on for further clues!

He wrote "In regard to mysterious rumblings or explosive sounds - when I was on the dry Bogan during August of last year, I stayed for two nights on Mr Barton's station at Mooculta. While there, and while discussing various natural phenomena with Mr Reginald Kirkwood, Mr Barton's manager, the former told me that, not infrequently, at the end of the very hot days just around and a little after sundown were to be heard coming from the direction of Mt Oxley (which I could see from there, and which is a distant about fourteen or fifteen miles) rumbling explosive sounds, sometimes loud, sometimes muffled, according to the state of the atmosphere and the direction of the wind. I suggest that it would probably be caused by bursting rock which had become intensely heated during the day, and was undergoing a rapid cooling process. He agreed that this was extremely probable, but could not say from actual observation. He also told me that the summit of Mt Oxley had numerous peculiar crater-shaped conical depressions: these were only about the summit. This was most interesting to me and I specially noted it in my book at the time. Upon making a close enquiry later, I found similar sounds had been heard coming from Mount Gundabooka, which I have also seen, and which is about forty miles SSW from Oxley. Now both of these short ranges stand up like islands in a veritable 'ocean' of plain country, the radiation from which must be enormous.