INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 



Hunter, where Newcastle now stands. After its discovery little 

 exploitation was done for the first thirty or forty years ; the first 

 export was in 1801, and in 1828 it reached 974 tons. The Govern- 

 ment mine at Newcastle became in 1830 the property of the 

 Australian Agricultural Company, which had the exclusive right 

 to mine for thirtv-one years, but this monoply was mutually 

 terminated in 1847. The estimated value of the output of coal 

 up to 1835 was £43.504; in the next ten years it was £129,112, 

 while in the next decennial period it attained to £6,766,970, as a 

 consequence of the discovery of gold, but for 1855 to 1865 it 

 rose to £16,001,504, this vast increase being due to the fact that 

 gold was produced during the whole decade*. The coalfield of 

 New South Wales embraces an area of 15,419 square miles, and 

 the quantity of future available coal within a depth of 4,000ft., 

 from seams over 2Jft., allowing for loss in working, is estimated 

 by Geoldgical Surveyor C Wilkinsonf at 78,198,200,000 tons. 



Flinders and Bass;]:, jointly and separately, between the years 

 1797 and 1798, had explored the coastline southward from Sydney, 

 reaching as far west as Western Port, and they embraced in their 

 voyage the circumnavigation of Tasmania. They described the 

 more prominent rock phenomena, such as the basalts of the 

 lllawarra Coast, the perpendicidar slates of the Furneaux Islands 

 and their penetration by granite, and the lofty mass of hard 

 granites of Wilson Promontory. 



In 1801 Flinders was commissioned to complete the examination 

 and survey of New Holland. In the list of scientific officers appears 

 the name of Robert Brown. To the 1,300 ascertained plants, chiefly 

 collected by Banks and Solander, he added nearly 3,000 species 

 by his personal labors, and eventually there were available to the 

 author of the *' Prodromus Morae Novse Hollandise " about 6,000 

 species. The coastline of Australia was traced with care as far as 

 the tropics. Flinders paid much attention to physiographic 

 features, whilst Brown collected rock specimens. The narrative 

 by Flinders § is interspersed with occasional references to rock 

 structure, and he particularly notes the prevalence of granite as 

 a subter-strvicture, with a calcareous stone for a cover, throughout 

 the southern coastline. Mr. Brown ascended the high peak in the 

 Flinders Range which bears his name, and found the stone of this 

 craggy mountain ridge to be slaty. The rock specimens collected 



* Abstracted I'lom Mineral Pioducts of New South Wales, by Harrie Wood, 1887, 

 pp. 4, 5. 

 t.\ust. Assoc. Adv. Sc, vol. ii.,p.463. 1890. J Voyage Terra Australis. 1814. \ Id. 



