122 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



world that can rival the mouth of the Hawkesbury River for majestic scenery, and the 

 stream is well named, in the language of an Australian poet, the Rhine of the South. 



North of this estuary the shore is rocky and weather-worn, with barren-looking hills 

 beyond ; then come the smooth flat wastes of sand, varied by the shining expanses of 

 the Tuggerah and Macquarie Lakes, which are visiblq from the bridge of a passing 

 vessel. Behind these rise ranges fledged to their summits with the dusky-foliaged euca- 

 lypts which seem so strange to eyes accustomed to the bright and lush greens of 

 England's forest-trees. Hills of blown sand line all the shore, except where the bluffs of 

 Red Head vary the monotony, and here the tug-boats are generally to be seen waiting 

 to tow vessels into the Newcastle Harbour; at night the flash of a blue light indicates 

 their whereabouts. The view is picturesque as we double Nobby's, once a rocky islet, but 

 now joined by a long breakwater to the city itself, which rises tier on tier with rows 

 of houses on a rounded hill. At the foot of the city, at the water's edge, and on the 

 shore of Bullock Island, are constructed the steam-cranes and the loading-shoots that fill 

 with coal the great fleet of vessels that make of Newcastle a busy port. The sea is 

 often wild and dangerous off this Nobby's Head, and many a vessel has gone ashore 

 when striving to cross the bar, made tumultuous by easterly gales and a six-knot 

 current. That green buoy a cable's length off shows where the ill-fated Cawarra went 

 down with passengers and crew ; being swept away by the rolling breakers one fearful 

 night, nearly thirty years ago. Winding away inland is the line of the Hunter River 

 with its many arms and sandy islands. 



From Newcastle Harbour for twenty miles the coast is smooth, bare and mono- 

 tonous. The long rollers foam against a sandy beach, which rises into two small hills 

 tipped with straggling scrub, till we come to Morna Point with its cliffs and hills of sand- 

 stone. Then round the light-house on the Point, and into Port Stephens ; a good harbour, 

 but with low, and in some places, swampy shores in no way inviting to the eye. 

 Much of the harbour consists of banks and shoals, which at ebb-tide are left uncovered, 

 and present a wide and somewhat dismal waste of glistening sand, but inland there are 

 fine wooded ranges. Sailing out of Port Stephens a pleasing contrast is presented by 

 the bold hills that stand like sentinels on either side of the entrance ; each is from 

 five to seven hundred feet in height, and slopes steeply down to the high cliffs which 

 descend sheer to the breakers below. 



The shore now seems tamer than it did before, showing only bare white hills of 

 sand for twenty miles, though off the coast there are crowds of rocks and shoals and 

 sunken ledges kept white with the hissing breakers. The next feature of interest is 

 Sugarloaf Point, where vessels are obliged to keep out a little from land to shun the 

 Seal Rocks and their attendant dangers. Beyond the scrub-covered hummocks of the 

 Point there stretches a low and level coast densely covered with scrub, but pleasantly 

 diversified by the lagoons called Myall Lake, Smith Lake and Wallis Lake. Isolated 

 peaks .covered with timber rise in succession a few miles inland ; and this scem-ry 

 continues with monotonous persistency to Cape Hawke and the bare sand-hills that 

 mark the entrance to the Manning River ; from thence the same wide-spreading flats 

 and sandy hills form the coast-line till the light-house of Crowdy Head is reached, 

 where navigation is endangered by the breakers and a broad patch of the Mermaid Reef. 



