2 83 



. / 1 '.V 77v'. / /. . IS/. I ILL USTRA TED. 



the gate of the Bulli Pass. From the platform, which is on the outermost edge of a 

 tall precipice, a varied ami extended view is obtained of many miles of southern coast- 

 lint-, and of rich and fertile farms as far south as Kiama. The white sandy hays 

 guarded by Mil headlands appear as a fringe to emerald-clad ridges and rich grassy 

 Mats adown which silver-glistening streams glide onward to the sea. The jetties, run out 

 for shipping coal, look like slender frame-works stretching into the ocean, and dwarfed 

 !>v distance along them move what seem to be toy freight-trains bearing miniature loads 

 to model vessels. This magnificent distant view is made more impressive by the sudden 

 change in the forest-foliage. From a dreary Australian waste, the traveller passes almost 

 with a stride into the dense and varied verdure of 

 a semi-tropical jungle. Great white-trunked figs bear 

 aloft their broad-leaved lustrous crowns above the 

 myrtles, pittosporums and lillipillies which overhang 

 the ferns and mosses of every little ravine. The 

 cabbage-tree palms shoot up straight from matted 

 vines and blossoming creepers, their heads waving 

 plume-like against the sky. All is rich, tropical, 

 odorous a growth proper for a region nearer to the 

 equator. The reason for this luxuriance, however, 

 is not hard to discover. In olden days the molten 

 trap-rock was forced up from below in long walls 

 or dykes, and its de- 

 composition spreading 

 over the surface has 

 furnished a rich deep 

 soil. The sloping 

 coastal range, too, is 

 sheltered from the cut- 

 ting westerly gales and 

 open to the warm moist 

 breezes of the sea, thus 

 a climate is secured in 

 which all plants of tem- 

 perate and semi - tro- 

 pical zones grow to 

 perfection. 



Close to the Bulli 

 Pass is the Bulli Coal- 

 mine, where from a 



tunnel four hundred feet above sea-level is drawn an annual output of two hundred 

 thousand tons of valuable coal, and north and south similar mines are at work. Far along 

 the shore extends a range of habitations, and seven miles southward and sixty-four miles 

 from Sydney lies Wollongong, with a trade, mainly seaward, equal to sixty thousand tons 

 yearly. The town is built upon a gently-sloping ridge, the point of which forms the 



THE ANGLICAN CATHEDRAL AT CJOULBUKN. 



