Joseph Beete Jukes

“ We should thus have a reason for a certain peculiarity of the fauna and flora of each tract of country;—for the eastern coast which was once one long island or group of islands, having plants and animals of the same species throughout its extent, which did not occur on the western, and vice versâ. Each group of islands when raised so as to be all connected by dry land, would be prepared to act the part of a specific, or even perhaps a generic centre, and its inhabitants would descend on the newly acquired plains, to reconquer and reclaim their old territories, or to occupy the new. ”

“ On approaching the foot of the hills on the road from Perth to York, we pass at once from the horizontal brown sandstone to a steep slope of granite, above this to another of greenstone, and then to granite again. The surface of this plateau of rock, here about 800 feet above the sea, was gently undulating, covered with one wide forest of a large eucalyptus, called here mahogany. ”

“ I fear it will appear to most persons that an attempt to give any tolerable account of the geological structure of so large a country as Australia, from the few observations that have been as yet made and published concerning it, must be a very rash one. This must be especially the case with geologists, accustomed only to the full, varied, and complex structure of western Europe. It is quite clear that any such account must be very incomplete and imperfect. ”

“ During some tertiary period, however, it is clear that it was again partially submerged, that a sea of no great depth extended over by far the greater portion of Australia, in which sea was deposited the beds of limestone and ferruginous sandstone, and the loose and incoherent sands that form the great plains of which we know so large and I believe so much larger a part of the country is composed. During this tertiary period we should have one long island, or chain of islands, running along what is now the great eastern chain of Australia ”

“ In the same manner during the summer season, if any great mountain range existed in the interior of Australia, it must attract and condense the moisture with which the north-west wind is loaded, precipitate it into rain, and send it back to the north-west or to some other coast in the shape of a river of some magnitude, greater than any of the inconsiderable streams which alone have been discovered. ”

“ We may first notice the simplicity and uniformity of the geology of Australia, when looked at on the great scale. The strike of the rocks and the direction of the principal chains of hills, is with one exception the same throughout the country, namely, north and south. This is the case with the great chain of the Eastern coast, with its subordinate ranges that traverse the interior of New South Wales and Australia Felix, such as the Hervey Range, Balloon or Taylor Range, and Peel Range, on the Lachlan river; Mount Byng Range, the Pyrennees and the Grampians in Australia Felix. ”

“ The longer duration and I believe the greater intensity of the hot wind here is evidently due to the close proximity of the central desert and that the mountain chains, such as they are, run parallel to the course of the wind and thus do little if anything towards sheltering the colony from its influence. In Western Australia the hot wind, or as it is there called the "land wind," blows from the N.E., but from my own experience, though sufficiently parching, they have not the fierceness and intensity which they have in Southern and Eastern Australia. ”

“ There are other places in Tasmania where coal is worked, but they are chiefly detached and isolated spots separated by greenstone ridges one from the other. I was not able to visit any other of these localities, but I should fear that the beds of coal in Tasmania are comparatively insignificant in an economic point of view, that the true coal-measures of the country have no great thickness, and that the seams of coal contained in them are but partial, thickening and thinning out perhaps along the same horizontal lines, and thus forming limited cakes rather than regular and persistent beds. ”

“ At the foot of Mount Eliza, near Perth, some beds of a close red sandstone may just be seen beneath these white sands and limestones, and a few miles further east, just on reaching the ferry to Guildford, the upper white rock ends in a little escarpment, and the red sandstone crops from under it, and forms the remainder of the country in the neighbourhood of the Swan River up to the foot of the hills. This red sandstone forms a much superior country to that of the white sand, the roads are hard and firm, and the ground far more fertile. ”

“ Now as there seems to be no rocks of the age of our great oolitic and cretaceous formations, they must either have been altogether destroyed and denuded which is unlikely, or they can never have been deposited. This circumstance inclines us to believe, that the country may, most probably, have existed as dry land during the oolitic and cretaceous periods, if so, is it not possible that its present fauna and flora may be in some way the descendants and representatives of the fauna and flora that in the oolitic period was common to the whole earth? ”

“ Many geologists have been struck with the entire absence of all the "secondary" formations in Australia, and with the analogies between the fossil flora and fauna of our European oolitic series, and those now found living in Australia and the Australian seas. We have seen in the preceding pages that we have in Australia a group of very old rocks, now more or less completely metamorphosed, and associated more or less intimately with granitic rocks ”

“ We have in our oolitic rocks in Europe fossil trigoniæ and other shells, fossil plants allied to zamiæ and cycas, and a fossil marsupial animal. As is well known to every one, Australia is the head quarters of the marsupial animals of the present day, zamiæ and cycadeæ abound in its forests, growing in the burnt up sandy plains, covered with ironstone pebbles under lofty slender leaved eucalypti, and the Australian coasts are the only localities where trigoniæ are found now living in the world. ”

“ A few miles above New Norfolk, the banks of the Derwent shewed cliffs consisting of alternations of sandstone with black and brown shales, producing a precise resemblance to parts of the English coal-measures. Much fossil wood, apparently parts of large trees, lay in these rocks. Similar rocks to these were frequently observed in the cuttings of the road-side as far as Oatlands in the centre of the island, and they almost invariably lay in positions so nearly approaching horizontality, that their dip was not appreciable to the eye. ”

“ The sky though clear of clouds assumes a hazy aspect through which the sun glows like a copper ball. Doors and windows are instantly closed, and men and animals all seem to seek shelter from the painful influence of this scorching blast. ”

“ Captain King describes somewhat similar effects on the N.W. coast, as arising from a wind blowing from the interior of the country or the S.E., while at Port Essington every wind that does not blow over the neighbouring sea is hot and overpowering. These hot winds, especially those felt in the south-eastern part of Australia, can have no other origin, than a current of air blowing over some great expanse of burning desert. Captain Sturt in his last expedition, seems to have penetrated into the very "nest and hot-bed" of these hot winds. ”

“ The rest of the island seems to be generally formed of great intersecting ridges of greenstone, enclosing plains or valleys composed of the palæozoic formation. Some of the more massive greenstones are evidently anterior to the palæozoic formation, as sections may be seen in which horizontal beds of sandstone abut against cliffs of greenstone, or even repose upon steps and ledges of that rock. In other cases, however, sandstones of the palæozoic formation appear to be capped by immense masses of greenstone, and they are certainly often broken through by basaltic and other igneous rocks. ”

“ During the hot wind the thermometer rises to 100° or even 115° in the shade, but with the southerly squall there is sometimes a sudden fall of full 40° in the course of a half or even a quarter of an hour. Near Port Phillip the hot wind comes from the north or even the N.E. the hot stream being probably deflected by the high lands of the Eastern Chain. In South Australia the hot winds come from the north, and sometimes continue as long as nine days. Many of the houses in Adelaide have double walls with a space between on their northern sides to ward off some of its influence. ”

“ In each case the wind loaded with the moisture it has taken up in passing over the ocean is effectually drained of it in crossing the cold altitudes of the mountain chain. It is obvious that if we changed the position of the Andes while the winds remained the same, if the mountain chain ran along the eastern coast of South America, the position of the fertile and desert tracts would be reversed. ”

“ North of Cape Melville the chain rapidly diminishes in height and importance, few parts being higher than 1,000 feet, and at Cape York we have only insignificant hills of 300 or 400 feet high. As in Bass's Straits, however, so also in Torres' Straits, the submarine continuation of the chain may still be traced in a line of steep, rugged, and often peaked islands, several of which are 7 and 800 feet high, which run in a north and south direction up to Mount Cornwallis, which is close to the coast of New Guinea. ”

“ Eagle Hawk Neck, the connecting link of Tasman's and Forrester's Peninsulas, is one of the celebrities of Tasmania, on account of the peculiar jointed structure of its rocks, forming what is called "the tessellated pavement." The rock is a very hard, brittle, fine-grained and compact grey sandstone or gritstone, lying in a horizontal position. It occasionally contains pebbles of granite, porphyry, or quartz rock. ”

“ Higher up the sandstone plateau, when it attains an altitude of nearly 3000 feet above the sea, some of these valleys attain dimensions of still greater grandeur. [8] They are however equally numerous wherever the formation occurs, even if it be near or below the level of the sea. Sydney harbour and Broken Bay are instances of this, their many long winding arms and multiplicity of small coves and bays, often bordered by precipitous cliffs, are nothing but the gulleys and ravines of this formation, which in those localities are at a sufficiently low level to admit the waters of the sea. ”

“ Jukes is to tell all that he knows and believes to be true, rather than to win favour from his readers by his manner of telling it. There is not a pretty phrase, an exaggeration, nor an invention in the two volumes of Mr. Jukes; all is plain unadorned fact, and because it is so, is deserving, not merely of perusal, but of study. ”

“ On climbing these hills, however, you find, that instead of being a single ridge, as it appeared from the sea, it is merely the steeply sloping edge of a hilly district, which extends for many miles into the interior of the country. In traversing the plain from the sea, you first pass for about ten miles over a district of loose white and, quite impassable for wheel carriages, but covered by the usual forest of the country, and producing fruits and vegetables in considerable quantities in the gardens of the colonists. ”

“ There are, for instance, very few mammals, I believe, and not many birds even, that are common to Western Australia and New South Wales, although the climate generally and the rocks and every other circumstance of the two countries is frequently the same. ”

“ In the winter the trade wind that blows on the north-east coast, of course, brings much moisture with it. The summits of the eastern chain catch and precipitate much of this moisture, their peaks being frequently clothed with clouds, and a multitude of small rills and brooks run down their eastern slopes into the sea. ”

“ To traverse such a country would be impossible except by either adhering to the top of one of the ridges, and patiently tracing out its labyrinthine foldings, always endeavouring to find its central axis, and never to diverge into one of its branches, inasmuch as each branch would probably split up into another maze-like net-work of ridges ”

“ In the southern part of New South Wales, indeed, and in Tasmania there are evidences of elevation of the land, not only in the tertiary rocks, now high above water, but in raised beaches and in beds and accumulations of sea shells beneath the present soil to very considerable altitudes ”

“ The sandstone seemed often argillaceous or marly, and in some cases seemed to contain beds of hard grey gritstone and ferruginous concretions. In lithological character it resembled a good deal the new red sandstone of England. I never found any fossils in it, but it appeared every where to be horizontal and conformable to the white limestones and sands above it. These latter are certainly tertiary, as they in some places contained shells of the genera area and venus apparently of species now existing on the coast, and certainly of very recent and unaltered aspect. ”

“ The galleries of the mines are dug with pickaxe and spade, and the rock can be easily cut in all directions with the knife. Some of it hardens rapidly when exposed to the air, so that when dug out and cut into shape it forms in a few days a very good building stone. In the galleries of the mines, the rock, which could only be called an argillaceous sandstone, had a "stripe," or appearance of bedding similar to that so often seen in clay slate. The general dip was W. 10°, S. at about 15°; but the rocks were said to have a quaquaversal dip of about that amount in this locality. ”