Geology of the Bartvon about Inverleigh. 299 



Pollock and the river Barwou on the west, the country is covered 

 with quartz sand, which on some of tlie river clifis is seen to be 

 about thirty feet in thickness, reposing on basalt, into which the 

 river has cut its way for another thirty feet. One travels for 

 miles along the Winchelsea Road without seeing a stone wall, and 

 as the plains are devoid of timber, stone would have been used 

 did it outcrop. Following this sandy country to the northward, 

 we find it on the left bank of the Barwon also, between Inverleigh 

 and Native Hut Creek, extending from the river itself north- 

 wards beyond the Geelong Road. On the east of Native Hut 

 Ci'eek a strip about twenty feet in thickness and half a mile in 

 length from north to south is crossed by the main road. Evidence 

 of its former extension to the eastward is afforded by scattered 

 quartz pebbles on the basalt plateau east of Murgheboluc. Here 

 the material is evidently derived from the sandy tertiaries north 

 of the Barwon, which were not covered by the flows of lava, and 

 which in many places still rise above its level. In the 

 neighbourhood of Inverleigh itself it is at times impossible to 

 separate this deposit from the sandy alluvium of the river flats 

 and the Balcombian beds, which are also sandy. We think it 

 better to regard the ground on which Inverleigh is built as 

 alluvium rather than as Balcombian, as some of the river cliff" 

 sections show very characteristic, thin, irregularly bedded structure 

 quite distinct from the even bedding of the marine beds. 



Some of the hillocks west of the township which gradually 

 rise to the level of the basalt of the western plains are doubtless 

 Balcombian, for it underlies the wbole district between the 

 ordovician on the north, and the Jurassic on the south. The 

 high level alluvium on the basalt points probal^ly to a time when 

 the drainage system was different from what it is now, and when 

 the Barwon and the Leigh possibly found their way to the sea 

 by passing along the south side of the Barrabools, the flow along 

 the long reach of the Barwon south of Inverleigh, and reaching 

 to near Winchelsea, being reversed. 



