CHAPTER VIII. 



SOUTH AUSTRALIA . 



South Australia can hardly be classed as a coal producing 

 country. The only coal find 011 which there has been any 

 attempt at mining, namely Leigh's Creek, 373J miles from 

 Adelaide, on the Great Northern railway line, is at present 

 idle. The coal measures are of Mesozoic age, being the 

 equivalent of the Ipswich coal measures of Queensland, which 

 are Trias- Jura. H. Y. L. Brown* writes: "The secondary 

 rocks which contain the coal bearing shales of Leigh's Creek 

 appear to occupy deep basins, which have been eroded in the 

 softer parts of the older rocks, and which at one time formed 

 a chain of lakes of various sizes and irregular shapes, extend- 

 ing northwards towards the region of Lake Eyre." . . . 

 "The fossils are of a character indicating vegetable and 

 animal life of a kind which could have existed only in fresh 

 water." The coal in its percentage of water resembles a 

 brown coal, but in other qualities it is more like a bituminous 

 coal; it may be looked upon as intermediate between the two. 

 It breaks up very readily on exposure to the weather. Tests 

 made with this coal, both alone and mixed with Newcastle 

 (N.S.W.) coal, in the Government railway locomotives, 

 proved it to be unsuitable for that class of work; but it was 

 considered a useful coal for domestic requirements, as it gave 

 little smoke and burnt out thoroughly. No. 1 bore, put down 

 on the edge of the basin, at 125ft. struck a 25ft. seam of coal; 

 at 150ft. was one foot of shale, and this was followed by brown 

 coal, shale and coal to 170ft., when blue clay-slate of Palaeo- 

 zoic age was met with. No. 2 bore was sunk one and a half 

 miles from No. 1 bore, near the centre of the basin; at a 

 depth of 1496ft. Sin. a coal seam 47ft. lOin. was found; below 

 this, thin coal seams up to two and three feet were met with, 

 and at 1900ft. they bottomed on primary rock. 



*Heports on the Coal-bearing Area in the Neighbourhood 

 of Leigh's Creek, South Australia, 1891. By authority, 

 Adelaide. 



