A bull, a mountain and a history: inside Queensland's most surprising outback retreat

The Brahman bull is looking at us head-on, stamping its feet in warning, its manhood on full display. "Put it away!" heckles Nieve, our guide. The bull flares its nostrils and lunges, then retreats, mock charging. I glance around the all-terrain vehicle we're riding in and realise the bull would hit me first. A high-pitched noise surrounds the buggy - it's coming from me.

Nieve laughs under her Akubra as we speed off down the dirt track. The wedge-tailed eagle feather tucked into her brim bounces as she tells us Mt Mulligan has a working cattle station, running 3500 Brahmans on its 28,000 hectares. Nieve is a typical Queenslander - all wisecracking dry humour and warmth.

She is exactly who you would want as your experience manager at the Far North Queensland outback resort, Mt Mulligan Lodge, and exactly who you would want to drive you full pelt on a bumpy track away from an angry bull.

Mount Mulligan is a former mining town and the site of Queensland's worst mining disaster, a coal mine explosion that claimed 75 lives back in 1921 and rocked the small, tight-knit community. The lodge is located near the ruins of the old mining village, both nestled at the base of the spectacular Mount Mulligan itself, a magnificent, 18-kilometre-long sandstone escarpment. Just look up from anywhere on the expansive red dirt property and the majesty of the giant rock, as big as 10 Ulurus, instils a sense of place.

This morning, we watched the sun rise to the east of the sandstone beast, the escarpment glowing red, then almost silver. Clouds hung on it and cleared, a waterfall raging down its breast, all within an hour after dawn. Nieve laid out a picnic for our group in the near-dark and we watched the mountain change as the colours projected onto it, us drinking strong coffee from a thermos and eating protein balls. Now, Nieve is driving us back to the resort and I think - not for the first time - how sadness and joy hang on this place, like the clouds clinging to the Mount Mulligan escarpment.

We were meant to arrive in a helicopter - 100 kilometres north-west of Cairns as the crow flies - but the rain thwarted our plan. We caught a light plane instead and were greeted by friendly faces and champagne, which we drank with grins on our faces after piling into four-wheel-drive buggies.

At the 28-guest lodge, we were met with cool towels and country charm in the main restaurant and shared space, a lofty building with floor-to-ceiling windows and whirring ceiling fans. We eat all our meals here - tasty sharing plates with a different theme each day, but sometimes too heavy for the stifling heat. On our first night, we rode our electric golf carts (every room gets one) up the hill to the Sunset Bar. We watched Mount Mulligan turn dark as we sipped wines and ate cheese in the converted old shed and all that could be heard was our merriment and the soft tunes playing from a speaker system rigged up to the wall - Neil Young, Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton, chords surely reaching the mob of wallabies that had appeared in the twilight a few metres away.

Mount Mulligan has 37,000 years of Indigenous heritage and is known as Ngarrabullgan to its traditional owners, the Djungan people, who believe the mountain is a dangerous and sacred place inhabited by the malicious spirit, Eekoo. When the mine exploded, the Djungan people believed this was retribution for disturbing the mountain and Eekoo. The mine continued operating until the 1950s, but now only the skeleton of the town remains, claimed by bush and animals, including the Brahmans.

We drive ATVs (a fun experience) and Nieve guides us along dusty tracks lined with termite mounds and desert scrub, while she spins her yarns. There is the one about the area's claim to fame, Ron Grainer, an Australian who used to play piano in the bottom pub of the old town and went on to create the theme song to Doctor Who. We learn about the Chinese merchants who planted cassia and tamarind trees, the circus that came to town and slashed the year, 1921, into the escarpment (you can see it if you squint), the pit ponies who lived and died in the mine and were often blind, and the miners who struggled with black lung.

Nieve also takes us to the old Hodgkinson goldfield, about an hour's drive from the lodge, where we tour the remains of the Tyrconnell gold mine and its artefacts from the mine's heyday in the 1930s. But it's the Mount Mulligan coal mine that really captures my imagination, the tragedy of the explosion. When we peer down into the mine entry, I think of the brave men who went in afterwards to bring back the miners' bodies.

I am back in my room when the rain begins, falling hard beyond my private balcony like a broken-hearted teenager crying over her first love - thick, fast and messy. Like a fickle young thing, it stops just as abruptly. When I look out over the weir at the back of the resort - which houses freshwater turtles, barramundi (they will cook it for you if you catch one), and there are even rumours of a resident freshwater crocodile - nothing has escaped the soaking. Blue-winged kookaburras bark their sad song and I can smell eucalyptus, sweet in the thick hot air.