256 NE W SO UTH WALES. 



existence of artesian water in rocks of triassic age. The importance 

 of this discovery cannot be estimated, as it practically opens up a new 

 field for this enterprise, and if, as the Government Geologist hints, 

 the formation possibly extends across to the Leigh Creek coal beds in 

 South Australia, the area in which the occurrence of artesian water 

 may be looked for is enormously enlarged. 



One of the most important questions that can be raised in connection 

 with our Artesian Supply is that of its permanency. This has been 

 fully dealt with by Mr. Jack, the Government Geologist of Queens- 

 land, who recently, in a most able paper, read before the Brisbane 

 meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, gave an account of his researches and explorations, in which 

 the intake beds of the cretaceous system were followed and marked 

 out, showing such an enormous increase in what had hitherto been 

 supposed to be the whole of the intake, that he could only presume 

 the exhaustion of the supply under conditions of such drought that 

 would mean the total annihilation of man and a greater part of the 

 Australian fauna. His report reads thus : 



It is not within the scope of a single paper to consider the whole subject of artesian 

 water. My object in addressing this section has been to point out what light has been 

 thrown on the question, so far as it affects Queensland, by recent investigations. We 

 have shown that an intake at sufficient altitude to account for the flow of water in the 

 artesian bores of the west exists along the eastern margin of the lower cretaceous, and 

 having found a simple explanation in agreement with known phj'sical laws, I go no 

 further in search of anotiier. I have argued that the loss of water bj- the river Darling, 

 and probably a similar loss of water by the western Queensland rivers, proves that the 

 water-bearing strata must leak into the sea, and hence that unless the strata be periodi- 

 cally replenished the sea level would ultimately become the level to which the water 

 would rise. A drought sufficiently long to bring about this result would, no doubt, have 

 for a prior result the destruction of the greater part of the land fauna of this part of 

 Australia, including the genus homo. 



Since that date, in a paper read before the Royal Society of New 

 South Wales (December, 1895), Mr. Pittman, the Government Geolo- 

 gist, reports the result of his examination of the intake beds of the 

 triassic rocks, and shows that these occupy an enormous area to the 

 east of (and additional to) the intake beds of the cretaceous formation 

 as surveyed by Mr. Jack. 



An important discovery was made by our Government Geologist 

 during 1894. By an inspection of a supposed opal field in Bidui-a 

 Parish, County of Caira, about 40 miles north of the town of Balranald, 

 he discovered that cretaceous rocks occurred nearly 250 miles to the 

 south of the southernmost limit hitherto assigned to them. In a 

 report dated 14th June, 1894, he writes : 



One fact in connection with these rocks is of very gi'eat interest, viz., that they have 

 all the appearance of the upper cretaceous beds, while the underlying clays, together 

 with the occurrence of concretionary- fragments of calcareous sandstone, under the sand 

 ridges over a considerable area of this country, appear to indicate that the lower cretaceous 

 beds are also present. 



The journey from Hay to Oxley was made during tiie night, and, therefore, I ^^'as 

 unable to examine the geological formation of the country between tliese two places ; but 

 from a point about 12 miles west of Oxley to Bidura, and thence southward to Balranald, 

 the tame formation appears to extend. 



