u6 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



In sailing north we get the best chance of a close view, for there is a southerly 



current that sets strongly down the coast. Vessels bound south stand well out to get 



its full benefit, but the coasters going northward hug the shore to escape it. It is 



owini r to this that nearly all the vessels wrecked on the coast of New South Wales 



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have come to grief when going north. 



Cape Howe is not imposing : a low sandy point rising steadily into a hill some 

 three miles inland, the bare patches of glaring white sand being varied only in places 

 by dark lines of stunted shrubs. From this point the boundary line between New South 

 Wales and Victoria starts, running inland in a north-westerly direction, to a point on 

 the Snowy River. The dividing line which is quite an arbitrary one, and follows no 

 natural features of the country was in the first instance merely drawn on the map, and 

 was planned to give all the south coast to Victoria, and all the east coast to New 

 South Wales. The line has now been carefully marked out by surveyors, a part of 

 their straight clearing through the forest being visible from the deck of the vessel. 



Gabo Island lies behind Cape Howe on the Victorian side, its ledges of granite 

 being covered in the centre by sand-hills that have been tossed up by the Pacific in 

 its angrier moods. On a ledge stands the light-house of dark red stone, throwing by 

 night the long rays of its fixed white light, from a height of one hundred and eighty 

 feet, over twenty miles of the darkly-heaving Pacific. But we are no sooner past the 

 Victorian border than the coast rises in lines of bold, though not lofty, cliffs of dark 

 red rocks. These run due north for eighteen or twenty miles, and then we see the 

 open sweep of Disaster Bay, formed by the projection of the smoothly-descending 

 boulders called Green Cape. Here also is a light-house, flashing its beams once a 

 minute throughout the night. Near this point occurred the disastrous wreck of the 

 Ly-ec-Moon. Forming a bold background rises Mount Imlay, inland about seventeen 

 miles, and towering nearly three thousand feet above the sea-level. 



A short run of eight miles along a rocky coast, with rugged ranges behind it, 

 brings us to the opeaing of Twofold Bay. The entrance is wide and free from danger ; 

 a jutting headland divides the bay into two portions, the southern being the larger and 

 the more sheltered. On the central point stands a wooden light-house painted white. 

 Behind rise dark ranges, timbered to the summit, gloomy and impressive, that seem to 

 shut the inlet out from the country behind. A long pier runs out into the bay, and 

 is the landing-place for the township of Eden, which at present is little more than a 

 scattered group of houses. This and a still more primitive town called Boyd, situated 

 on the southern shore, and named after one of the early commercial adventurers, were 

 once regarded as the coming cities of this coast, and were thought to be destined to 

 a glorious future ; but the whaling and other industries on which all this prosperity was 

 to depend, proved' disappointing. So also was a subsequent expectation based on 

 promising gold-fields ; as these declined, so did both towns. Houses and land were left 

 deserted ; and now the townships, planned for a great destiny, suggest the idea of 

 unrealized prophecy. But there is stiil some life and activity in Eden. The harbour is 

 good, and the hilly country inland gives every indication of mineral wealth, so that 

 the district may yet have a prosperous future, and redeem to some extent the all too 

 sanguine hopes of those who expected more than it could give. 



