PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 29 



from the bottom of its valley high on the shoulder ul the 

 mountain, where it lies athwart and cleft by the i)reseut 

 lines of drainage.* 



East of the Murrunibidgee area Mr. T. G. Taylor records 

 with emphasis "positive evidence of the Tcrtiarij fohhinj into 

 which the Cullarin or Lake George Fault has passed at its 

 southern extremity."! South of Lake George the Molonglo 

 River has sawn across this elevation as it slowly rose against 

 it. 



The littoral ridge of southern New South Wales fails on 

 approaching the Hunter valley. In the Hawkesbury Estuary 

 the latest movement was a subsidence of two hundred feet 

 preceded by an elevation of a thousand feet. Further north 

 in the more stable area, Prof. David thus records the latest 

 movements, "The apex of the delta near West Maitland rose 

 slowly to the amount of about fifteen feet, while a downward 

 movement was still in progress in the neighbourhood of the 

 present ocean beach between Stockton and Port Stephens. "J 



Opposite Newcastle the continental shelf (Fig. 5) reaches 

 its maximum breadth in this State of thirty-four miles, yet 

 is narrow in comparison with that of the tropics and has 

 probably suffered considerable curtailment. Regarding it as 

 a submarine buttress, its shelter affords a radial valley reach- 

 ing further back from the sea, namely a hundred and thirty 

 miles, than any other coastal river in New South Wales. 

 Following the argviment advanced for the Burdekin and the 

 Fitzroy, it is now suggested that the Hunter represents an 

 original radial stream, a survivor of the peneplain epoch. 

 That it has been but partially protected by a lesser buttress, 

 and its head has been withdrawn from the western peneplain 

 in which a larger buttress would have allowed it to rest. Yet 

 it now rises at an elevation lower than the source of any 



* Came, " Geology of Western Coalfield," 1908, p. 18. 



t Taylor, These Proceedings, xxxii., 1907, p. 329. 



X David, " Geology of Hunter River Coal Measures," 1907, p.310. 



