248 On the Cual MeuMires cduiig the Coast 



The beach along the eastern shores of Western Port Bay 

 presents trap and hiva of various kinds, and in different 

 states ; in some cases hard and crystalline, in others decom- 

 posed or decomposing into soft rich-coloured earths and 

 clays. The banks of the bay are generally low and sandy, 

 but occasionally rise into blujffs from twenty to thirty feet 

 high, formed of decomposed lavas. 



The coal measures commence with a well-defined boundary 

 about a quarter of a mile north-west of, or within Griffith's 

 Point, ojjposite Cape Woolomai, in Phillip Island, at the 

 eastern entrance to Western Port. Griffiths' Point is a 

 bold headland presenting cliffs nearly a hundred feet high 

 next the sea, and forming the termination of a range of 

 wooded hills which run inland nearly east and west. The 

 coal measures are immediately contiguous to the lavas, but 

 whether they run beneath them can only be determined by 

 boring or sinking. The workings carried on some years 

 ago, under the authority of Mr. Cole, were on the shores of 

 the bay between East Head and the mouth of the Kiver 

 Bass, at a spot where a portion or point of the coal measures 

 protrude into the mass of the eruptive rocks ; the former 

 having been much broken and disturbed by the latter. In 

 such a place no extended bed of coal could have been 

 expected, nor was such found. 



From Griffiths' Point the cliff towards Bass's Straits 

 present a continuous section of the coal measures for a length 

 of eight or ten miles to the River Bourne, known locally as 

 the First River. Here the cliffs are succeeded by a range 

 of sandy hummocks ; but the coal measures probably extend 

 beneath the surface, as they re- appear six miles further 

 along the coast at Cape Patterson, where a natural section is 

 displayed both in the low bluffs and on the beach. It is at 

 this spot that the coal itself rises to the surface. Within 

 half a mile of the Cape three seams crop out upon the 



