103 



coloured the area as tertiary in his sketch map of the Geology 

 of Australia. Mr. Woods has more recently sought to bring 

 the fossiliferous formation of the great Australian Bight into 

 closer correlation with the Mount Gainbier beds rather than 

 with those of the Eiver Murray.— (Trans. Roy. Soc, X.S.W., 

 1877.) 



A view not accepted by the Rev. W. B. Clarke, who writes — 

 '"' But somehow the great sections along the Australian Bight 

 have yet to be catechised as to whether the Australian 

 tertiaries follow the laws which rule the existence of these 

 deposits in Europe, or whether the peculiar aberrations 

 noticed by Mr. Woods in some of his valuable writings are or 

 are not exceptions to those laws." — (Sedimentary Formations 

 of X.S.W., 1878, p. 95.) 



Aware of the great interest that had thus grown up respecting 

 the cliffs of the Australian Bight, I naturally allowed the 

 desire to scientifically examine them to influence me in under- 

 taking the commission, which seems likely to prove an arduous 

 one, and one not without risk, offered me by the G-overnment. 

 But one of the greatest disappointments which it has been my 

 illfortune to experience as a geologist was in reserve for me, 

 as I travelled along the whole line of the Bunda cliffs without 

 having been able to make a close inspection of them, because 

 with the sole exception of the west face of Wilson's Bluff they 

 are inaccessible. My first acquaintance with the Bunda cliffs 

 was made at Wilson's Bluff, and unaware of their inaccessi- 

 bility throughout their range I did not repeat my visit, which 

 I otherwise would have done ; and as my ch^ef occupation on 

 that occasion was the construction of a stratigraphical section 

 — a very difficult and dangerous task, by the way — I bring back 

 with me a very meagre collection of their fossils ; but these, I 

 think, will prove sufficient to establish a correlation with other 

 tertiary formations in this colony. 



Range of Older Tertiary Escarpment. — The Bunda tableland is 

 the elevated bed of the Older Tertiary sea, whose sediments 

 were deposited within a very extensive granite basin. Evre's 

 Peninsula is granitic and metamorphic, the only tertiary strata 

 on it being a fringe of pleistocene on the south coast ; similarly 

 constituted is the south-west part of Western Australia, whilst 

 between these great protuberances lie the older tertiary. The 

 edges of the granite base are seen on the east at Yalata, 

 Eowler's Bay, at Pidinga, and Ooldea ; on the north at 

 Boundary Dam, and on the west at Point Culver. Between the 

 extremes on the coast — Point Culver, lat. 125 deg. 30 min., 

 and near Eowler's Bay in about lat. 132— the older tertiary 

 rocks follow a gentle curve, the chord of which is about 500 

 miles in length, and extend seaward for at least eieht to fifteen 



