520 GEOLOGY OF THE CLARENCE RIVER BASIN, 



actually reached, depends in part I suppose on its extremely low 

 seaboard, partly on the vast quantities of warm sea water which are 

 drawn in with every tide, and partly upon the free and well-drained 

 character of the sugarlands. 



The result of these advantages, the sugar industry of the 

 Clarence, presents a really astonishing spectacle. Industrial 

 activity of any kind, however striking it may be to the visitor, 

 is not indeed a subject for the consideration of this Society. But 

 having been recently enabled to visit the district, and to make the 

 trip from Grafton on the Clarence to Glen Innes on the Table 

 land, and back again, I had an opportunity of making some 

 observations on the Geological structure of that part of the country, 

 which I hope may be worth some attention. There is more 

 repetition in the paper than I could wish ; but it seemed to me 

 while writing that with more condensation I might become less in- 

 telligible. " Brevis esse laboro, obscurusfio." 



The road from Grafton to Buccarumbi, with which we are 

 principally concerned, runs through a poor country of sandstones 

 and shales, undulating in the valleys, but broken by ranges of 

 mural precipices closely resembling the escarpments common in 

 the Hawkesbury sandstone. The false bedding or oblique 

 stratification so common in the latter series is equally predominant 

 here ; and the rock faces are excavated by atmospheric action into 

 caves or " gibber gunyas" of exactly the same character as those on 

 the shores of Port Jackson or in the gullies of the Blue 

 Mountains. The vegetation is also so similar that it is only by a 

 kind of effort that one remembers that the formation is not the 

 same. A hill beyond the river Orara is capped with quartz 

 boulders and gravel. To this I shall refer in its proper place. 

 Quitting the main basin of the Orara by the line of the 

 Chambigne Creek, and over a range covered with a fine open forest 

 of spotted gum and ironbark, we descend to the OBX Creek over 

 a road metalled with petrified wood. This gully is the most 

 interesting geological feature which we have yet observed. For 

 the right bank of the Clarence receives its waters partly from the 

 coast ranges by the Orara, and partly from the south and west. 



