It is located 19 km inland from Collingwood Bay in Oro Province.

It lies on a fault line along the northeast flank of the Owen Stanley metamorphic belt.

After four months of volcanic earthquakes, small phreatic eruptions began on 18 September 1943, breaking through a layer of highly metamorphosed rocks, before the first major explosion occurred on 27 December 1943.

Two more major explosions occurred on 13 February and 23 July 1944, creating pyroclastic flows and lahars, and leveling 80 km2 of forest.

The volcano was capped with a 500 m wide, steep-walled crater that is now forested and contains a small lake.