58 THE ORIGIN OF AUSTRALIA 
Life,” and so far our views march together. There was then 
free water communication right across what is now the 
middle of the continent ; the islands were mountains, and 
the climate, in consequence, temperate to warm-temperate, 
equable, and the land bathed with plentiful rains. 
4. At this time, and far onward into the- Tertiary, 
neither the plants nor the animals differed much from those 
of other parts of the globe. The Tertiary flora, for example, 
was part of what V. Ettinghausen calls the “ universal ” 
flora, and might just as well have been called European 
or North American as Australian. There were, however, 
no land mammals, and this is most important, and has been 
overlooked. There is not a trace of any land mammal 
in any Australian rock older than Phocene, and this in 
spite of the continued Jabours of geologists in our richly 
fossiliferous, and wide-spread Tertiary deposits.* 
5. From the close of the Cretaceous onwards, upheaval 
was pretty continuous, until eventually the Australian 
Archipelago was converted into the Australian Continent. 
By this time, mammals had entered from Asia on the north- 
east, via New Guinea. 
6. The immediate result of the upheaval was the 
cutting off of the water-supply from the central districts, 
and consequent elevation of the temperature—deterioration 
of climate had come in the train of enhanced area ; 
Separation had given place to Federation, and the price 
paid was a heavy one. The old islands had been blessed 
with an equable, insular climate: they were like Celebes 
or Moluccas, but not so hot. The new land was, as now, 
hot and dry—it was semi-desert. Nor was the dryness of 
the central plains entirely due to diminished rainfall, for, 
as we shall see, they were robbed of much of the water 
which would normally have refreshed the soil, by peculiar 
conditions which turned the floods underground, only to 
be useful again as artesian water, eagerly, and expensively, 
sought after by deep borings. 
7. Under those conditions the plants and animals had 
* A single specimen has been recorded from Tasmania from doubtful 
older Tertiary rocks. It is, however, quite certain they must have been 
very rare; but the presence of a few forms does not affect my argument. 
The vast majority are of late Tertiary age. 
