2 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria. 



and those of the Barrabools, the latter dipping easterly and 

 showing in a series of outcrops the beds proved in the Bellarine 

 bores.* 



The Older Volcanic. 



Along the cliffs at Portarlington the older volcanic rock occurs 

 on both sides of the pier and exhibits various degrees of decom- 

 position. In one place it is quarried for road metal, while to the 

 east it is a soft unctuous clay which can be traced along the 

 cliffs gradually S'howing more and more its true character till it 

 disappears below sea level. In this locality it is overlain by 

 coarse ferruginous grits which are probably of upper tertiary age. 

 Near the Clifton Springs it forms the greater part of the cliffs. 

 Here, at about thirty feet above sea level, it is covered by a 

 conglomerate consisting of sub-angular and well rounded pebbles 

 up to four or live inches in diameter, and comprising quartz in 

 various forms, hard blue metamorphic sandstones, nodular schists, 

 and other altered argillaceous rocks with beds of sand and clay. 

 Towards the top it gradually becomes finer and more sandy. At 

 the Drysdale Pier hard ferruginous grits come down to the 

 water's edge, the volcanic rock having been here, as elsewhere, 

 deeply denuded. At the next point, about a quarter of a mile 

 west of the pier, the beach floor and cliffs consist of a volcanic 

 ash or breccia, full of angular fragments of scoriaceous basalt up 

 to an inch in diameter. The deposit is well and evenly bedded 

 and has a dip some degrees west of north at about 20°. Decom- 

 position has considerably affected the strata and the colours are 

 very variable, being blue, gray, dark-green, fawn and chocolate. 

 From here, for about 2^ miles westward, these ash beds are 

 almost continuously exposed to view on the beach floor with 

 intermissions to be mentioned presently. In s'ome places the 

 cliffs ai'e seen to be almost entirely composed of ash overlain by a 

 vai'iable thickness of upper tertiary clays and grits. The ash 

 beds gradually sink to sea level and disappear near the boundary 

 between the parishes of Bellarine and Moolap, where they are 

 overlain by eocene beds. These continue for nearly half a mile, 

 when ash beds again appear from beneath them with a north- 

 easterly dip. We roughly estimated a thickness of 300 feet of 



» \ Sheet 24 S.E. Note 7. 



