448 Norman Taylor — The Cudgegong Diamond Field. 



course for two miles, — we cross another greenstone dyke running in 

 the same direction as those before mentioned, and crossing the river 

 about midway in the bend to the south. There are some extensive 

 alluvial flats between Mr. Hassall's house and the ford, where the 

 Wellington Eoad crosses, in which some good gold leads may pro- 

 bably exist. 



Above this crossing place a rocky bar spans the river, consisting 

 of a dark grey breccia, having a gneissose appearance and associated 

 with flinty beds. About a mile along the road to the north of this, 

 on Mr. Lowe's property, and about 1^ miles due west from Hassall's 

 Hill, is another small basaltic outlier, resting on drift ; there are 

 also several drift or " made " hills uncapped by the basalt. These 

 had been formerly worked for gold. Below this there is no trace of 

 basalt for seven or eight miles down the river, till a little below 

 Laby's Farm, at Uumby, where there is a very small outlier on the 

 river bank, but whether the older drift underlies it or not, had not 

 been proved. " Made " hills of drift, apparently the newer drift, 

 skirt the river-banks on both sides to its junction with the Macquarie 

 River, but there is no further trace of basalt on the Cudgegong River; 

 although there are outlying remains down the valley of the Mac- 

 quarie River of a former sheet of basalt, which had perhaps flowed 

 down the valley of that river, and covered up the Tertiary drifts, 

 which have been worked for gold, at a considerable elevation above 

 the present river. The rocks down the river are similar in character 

 to those above, but are less metamorphosed and more shaly, with 

 interbedded brecciated conglomerates. Syenitic granite crops out 

 occasionally, and quartz-reefs are very numerous. 



About a mile to the north of the northern end of the " Rocky 

 ridge" there has been a small "rush" (Cunningham's) to a gully 

 and " made " ridge under the schist ranges forming the eastern 

 watershed to the Sandy or Cudgebeyong Creek. A nugget weighing 

 36 ounces was found there, but no diamonds. The sinking varies 

 from 12 to 20 feet, very little quartz occurs in the wash dirt, and 

 what there is is angular ; but magnesite occurs in considerable quanti- 

 ties, both massive in large lumps, and as peculiar curved cylindrical 

 concretions. The ranges at the creek head are everywhere inter- 

 sected by small quartz veins. 



This, then, being the history, at the time of my residence there, of 

 the diamond-bearing localities, I will next enumerate the various 

 drifts and the materials of which they are composed. 



There are, on the Cudgegong, at least six drifts of different ages, 

 the oldest of which the late Rev. W. B. Clarke took to be as young 

 as Pleistocene. I differed from his view, and placed them temporarily 

 with Older Pliocene, following my Victorian experiences, and later, 

 in working out the discovery, at the " "Welcome rush " near Stawell, 

 Victoria, of a bed of marine littoral fossils overlying a gold drift, I 

 came to the conclusion (see Progress Report of the Geological Survey 

 of Victoria, No. 3, p. 264) that these fossils were probably of Upper 

 Miocene or Lower Pliocene age, and the gold drift under them much 

 older. I am now of opinion, after reading the report of my friend 



