764 E. C. ANDREWS 



of Lower Cretaceous rocks on the coast of Queensland at some dis- 

 tance north of Brisbane. 1 



Reference will be made later to this local evidence of folded 

 Trias- Jura and Cretaceous rocks along the coast of Central and 

 Northern Queensland. 



Tertiary period. — The Eocene sea was not large and appears to 

 have been confined to areas, relatively small, in the north and south 

 of the continent. Indeed, the continent as a whole, except in the 

 northeast, appears to have been growing in size subsequently to the 

 close of the Cretaceous, although a submergence, postdating the 

 recent Glacial period, appears to have isolated New Guinea and 

 Tasmania from the mainland. 



It is as if there has been a general tendency in Australasia and 

 New Zealand to move in a vertical direction in post-Cretaceous time, 

 the movement being subject to two great laws: 



1. That elevation, or vertical movement, of the land was empha- 

 sized in an easterly direction, as from Western Australia to New 

 Zealand, due allowance being made for the lagging behind differ- 

 entially of the two great and relatively heavy portions, namely, 

 Central Australia and the suboceanic mass separating Australia 

 from New Zealand. 



2. That the uplifts after the widespread peneplanation of the 

 Cretaceous period did not proceed continuously, but were saltatory 

 in their action, and, moreover, that the periods of time separating 

 these uplifts became less as the present time approached, and that, 

 nevertheless, the amounts of individual uplifts became greater as 

 the periods marking the pauses between the uplifts became less in 

 duration. This has given rise to great "valley-in-valley'' struc- 

 tures owing to the interrupted work of the streams. 



Thus in Australia, during what appears to be the Cretaceous 

 period, great peneplains were formed in the land areas lying east 

 and west of the Cretaceous sea, and only the hardest rock structures 

 remained to show the existence of former plateaus or hills. In the 

 various Tertiary divisions of time the streams carved valleys with 



1 B. Dunstan, Queensland Government Mining Journal, December, 191 2; H. C. 

 Richards, "The Cretaceous Rocks of Woody Island," Queensland Aust. Assoc. Adv. 

 Sci., Melbourne meeting, 1913, pp. 719-88. 



